Discovery at Spring Trails, Land Tejas’s gated and solar-panel-badged community north of Spring, is selling well, says Lisa Gray: “. . . only a few weeks after Discovery put itself on the market, and without even a finished house that would-be buyers can tour, most of the lots ready for building have been optioned, and the developer is scrambling to make more available fast. In fact, Discovery is off to the fastest start of any development in the company’s 11-year history, and Land Tejas expects demand to pick up even more this fall. Already, propelled mostly by Google searches, 200 to 300 people a week are touring the neighborhood’s ‘Discovery Center.’” [Houston Chronicle]
Read more about: 77386, Alternative Energy, Discovery at Spring Trails, Green Design, Homebuilders, Homebuying, Land Development, Master-Planned Communities, Montgomery County, New Construction: Residential, Real Estate Marketing, Solar Power, Sprawl, Spring, Utilities
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Read more about Alternative Energy, Development Strategy, Green Design and Development, Homebuilders, Homebuying, Land Development, Master-Planned Communities, Montgomery County, Neighborhoods: Discovery at Spring Trails, Quicklink, Real Estate Marketing, Sprawl, Utilities
Sure, everybody’s excited about biodiesel because it’s new and rare. But just wait until smelly biodiesel production plants start littering the landscape like fast-food franchises.
If you’ve got $1.95 million, you can set one up too. A company out of Florida is selling “prepackaged,” turnkey biodiesel plants from a German factory. Let them come, and they will build it:
As part of its business-in-a-box plan, Xenerga promises long-term, exclusive deals to purchase waste cooking oil from a network of suppliers whose clients include McDonald’s Corp. and Chili’s Grill & Bar. Xenerga’s supply side also focuses on rendered animal fats like beef tallow, chicken grease and pig fat, all of which are plentiful in Texas.
Interest from this region has been strong, the company told the Houston Business Journal: a plant in west Houston is planned already.
Xenerga also promises to deliver customers willing to buy the estimated 5 million gallons of biodiesel per year that the plants produce.
Each Xenerga plant only takes up half an acre, requires two employees at a time, and can be sited almost anywhere from light industrial parks to rural farmland.
Photo: Biodiesel production plant in Carl’s Corner, Texas, by flickr user Nicola Matsukis
Read more about: Alternative Energy, Environmental, Franchises, Green Development, Odors
Since February, about half the residents of Oak Ridge North, a small city just across I-45 from the Woodlands, have been getting their electricity from chicken fat. The nation’s first entirely biodiesel-generated electrical plant, run by Biofuels Power Corp., supplies power to the community. The fuel comes from a sister company, Safe Renewables, which runs a plant two miles away that can create biodiesel from vegetable oils too. But chicken fat is apparently plentiful around here, so Oak Ridge north gets powered by schmaltz.
The power facility has the capacity to produce approximately 5 MW of electricity using three used diesel Caterpillar generators that act as a single source of power. At full load, they use 72 gallons of biodiesel per MW hour. An interesting feature is that waste heat from the generators is used to keep the fuel tank warm and prevent . . . the biodiesel from gelling. The company is experimenting with various additives to decrease emissions and increase efficiency. “We hope to get down to 60 gallons per megawatt hour,” Crimmins says.
When’s poultry power coming to the rest of Houston? Well, there’s that pesky nitrogen-oxide-that-becomes-ozone emissions problem. We hope they’ll be able to keep that French fry smell out of the AC, too.
Photo: xgray’s childhood home in Oak Ridge North
Read more about: 77385, Air Quality, Alternative Energy, Biodiesel, Electricity, Green Communities, Oak-Ridge-North, Odors, Power
