Solar Panel and System Lease

Solar City Lease Program

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I just heard about this on the radio today.
I will look into this and let you know more about this program.

If anyone tries it, let us know how it works and what you think.
Would you recommend it to others?



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Texas Gov. Perry Boosts Electric Cars

ARLINGTON, Texas – In a state where the oil and gas industry is king, the arrival of electric vehicles and building the charging infrastructure have jolted the public's perception about Texas, Gov. Rick Perry said Friday.

"Here in Texas, we don't just talk about it. We're doing something about it," Perry said in Arlington at an energy company's event, later joking that most people probably would not have associated Texas with emission-free vehicles.

But it's "what they should have been thinking," he said.

Texas already has dozens of charging stations in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and some suburbs, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels & Advanced Vehicles Data Center. Drivers can plug their cars into docking stations at various places — including Houston City Hall, a hotel near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a San Antonio Church and even the Dell Computers headquarters near Austin.

All electric cars can be charged at those slower charging stations that add power in about four to eight hours, depending on the size and life left in the battery, industry officials said. But electric cars are still fairly new, and some attribute slow sales to the vehicles' high costs and use limited to short trips.

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On Friday, NRG Energy said its new station at a drug store in Dallas is the state's first fast-charging station, which can be used by some of the vehicles and has a recharger with a 480-volt direct current that can add 30 miles of range to an electric car in as few as 10 minutes. NRG plans to install 70 of the stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and another 50 in the Houston area by the end of next year, a privately funded project with AeroVironment, which designed and produced the charging stations.

"It's not like you're going to Walgreen's and spend eight hours, but when you leave you're more charged," said Kristen Helsel, a vice president at AeroVironment.

NRG's chief executive David Crane said that while Texas is known as the oil and gas capital, "There's nothing that was announced today that's going to change that ... and that's not all that Texas is. Now it's time for electric vehicles."

The Lone Star State is joining the rest of the nation in promoting the adoption of electric vehicles — especially as the national average for regular unleaded gasoline rose to $3.71 a gallon over the past week, according to AAA.

Also in Houston, the city has its own program through a partnership with Reliant Energy. Ten charging stations have been up and running for about a year, and 25 more are being installed, said Laura Spanjian, the city's sustainability director.

Houston also is buying electric cars for the city's fleet and has received federal stimulus money for another 30 charging stations to serve those municipal vehicles, she said. The first, a Nissan Leaf, is expected to arrive in the next week or two.

"We would have the first electric car of any city fleet in Texas," Spanjian said.

Austin was one of nine cities that benefitted from a federal program that enables the city to get up to 200 charging stations, as long as they install 100 by the end of this summer. The city has already put in about a dozen, said Carlos Cordova, spokesman for Austin Energy, the city-owned electric utility.

He said Austin is predicting there will be about 150 electric vehicles on city roads this year and maybe another 150 next year — but up to 36,000 electric vehicles by 2020.

"It will develop slowly," Cordova said, noting that projections are based on research conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute.

Some cities and states offer rebates to encourage buying electric vehicles Those displayed at the Arlington Convention Center on Friday were the Toyota Prius PHV, Chevrolet Volt, VIA Truck, Tesla Roadster, Smart fortwo EV, Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Nissan Leaf.

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0 new comment was just posted. Show jrtexas 11 minutes ago

Great idea. I drive NEV here on the old cavalry fort where I live. However, the nearest real town (Walmart) is 35 miles. We travel 40 plus miles to buy groceries or go to the doctor We go 50 plus miles to the dentist. When someone develops an electric car that will get us there and back at a reasonable (not 40 grand) price then we will consider an electric vehicle.
Unless you live in an urban environment these vehicles are simply not practical. Not to mention insane costs.
Like Flag
nativeson1 19 minutes ago

Let me see here .more electric cars .they get charge by and with with electricity ...Electricity need nuclear,coal or hydro to make more electricity..I get make more electric cars so we need more electric power to waste more electricity and burn just a little less fossil fuel
Like 1 person liked this. Flag
nomorecommies 26 minutes ago

Funny thing. In 1900, there were more electric cars in NYC than cars with internal combustion engines. Why do we have such trouble making a decent affordable reliable electric car now???? LAZY OVERPAID ZERO WORK ZERO QUALITY UNION THUGS!!!!!!!!!
Like 1 person liked this. Flag
j3bhu 23 minutes ago in reply to nomorecommies

What a stupid thing to say. Like the unions are in charge of R and D at all the major car companies in the world.
Grow up and stop throwing out hatred just to make your political point. It makes you look foolish.
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j3bhu 30 minutes ago

If they are so great how come the governor and all of his staff and all other politicians aren't driving them and using the m for government vehicles?
It is always the little guys who need to change our ways and tighten our belts while the governors and senators and celebrities continue to live like kings, mostly on our money.
As soon as all government officials are issued electric cars they can start telling me what to drive.
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166mhz 52 minutes ago

I can hardly wait until someone thinks of a way to get something else out of these charging stations .. it's not me - it's just the way the system is setup .. first there was a garage to fix the car then it sold frito chips and sodas turning it into a quick mart -- then a service station - then a truck stop - then a major truck stop city .. and on and on and on ... you get the idea...
Like Flag
chaplaincog 1 hour ago

This government should be doing everything possible to push the electric car and get off the Middle East oil. thefatherslovebook.com
Like Flag
Roy H. Taylor, Sr 2 hours ago

If anyone is clearly concerned about an electric car then why not bring back GMs EV-1. Who Killed the Electric Car? A very good film about the disappearance of an electric car from the roads in California that apparently was working just fine. What about a fuel efficient diesel car? There are plenty in foreign countries that are superior to our models. Some of the VW diesels are reaching 70 mpg figures, why can't we have one of these? By the way these diesels are also environmental friendly when compared to gas or hybrid versions. Read auto magazines that reach a world reading population or look up on the internet, these diesels exist now!
Like 1 person liked this. Flag
synical5 5 hours ago

Last I read, the electric cars are mostly kaput after going up a steep hill with a full load of people.
I doubt too many people will take to these "puddle jumpers". Why not a set up like diesel Locomotives?
A constant speed gasoline engine attached electronically to a set of drive motors on the axels,
Actuated by a low battery indication.
Of course you could put a Pick up bed on it and take it to the Golf Course!
Look out Augusta, here I come!
Like 3 people liked this. Flag
ancienttexan 5 hours ago

Living in WesTexas and 60 miles from the next town in any direction, I can't think of any thing more worthless than an expensive electric car. Get real! Gov. Perry knows better than this.
Like 5 people liked this. Flag
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19th Annual Environmental Film Festival, March 15-27

19th Annual Festival, March 15-27

60 Venues, 150 Films, 26,000+ Filmgoers
Washington, D.C.
As the Environmental Film Festival launches its annual celebration of the natural world on screens across Washington, D.C., we explore one of the most controversial and timely topics of our day: the critical relationship between energy and the environment. Please join us in March as we present 150 diverse and engaging films from 40 countries.


2011 Program Additions & Changes
Date: March 3, 2011

Program Changes:
• The film, “Elite Squad 2,” scheduled for March 16 at E Street Cinema, has been cancelled.

• The film, “Black Ocean,” will screen on March 21 at 7 p.m. at Embassy of France (changed from March 17)

• The film, “We Still Live Here: As Nutayunean,” will screen at the Carnegie Institution for Science on March 25 at 8:30 p.m. (originally scheduled at the National Museum of the American Indian on March 25 at 7 p.m.)


Program Additions:
• The Washington, D.C. Premiere of “America’s Wildest Refuge” about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will take place on March 27 at 12:15 p.m. at the National Museum of Natural History.

• An additional screening of the film, “Oil Rocks: City Above the Sea,” is scheduled for March 27 at 3:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Institution for Science.


List of some films (in new window) at: www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org/films

Link to download full program (in new window):
http://www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org/images/uploads/2/media.2772.pdf

Read more (in new window) at www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org

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Environmental Film Festival Underway In DC

Environmental Film Festival

by Eliza Barclay, Washington, D.C. on 03.12.09
Culture & Celebrity

The 17th annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital kicked off yesterday and will continue through March 22 with 136 eco-themed documentary, feature, animated, archival, experimental and children’s films. This year's festival has several films on oceans and sea life and a special Ocean Film Series, including the world premiere of The State of the Planet's Oceans, hosted and narrated by Matt Damon. Among other special guests, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Hedrick Smith will speak March 15 about water pollution and show clips from his upcoming film, Poisoned Waters, airing April on PBS Frontline, comparing the Chesapeake Bay to Puget Sound.

A Sea Change, which looks at the growing menace of ocean acidification, is another important film premiering at the festival. It is a particularly timely documentary, especially given that the issue is among the top priorities at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change this week in Copenhagen. Already, ocean acidity has increased about 32% since pre-industrial times, according to the BBC.

Director Barbara Ettinger and husband Sven Huseby, an environmentalist, were inspired by an article by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker, "The Darkening Sea," published in 2006. The film will screen March 16 at the National Museum of Natural History.

Another film of interest for ocean lovers is At the Edge of the World, a documentary on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group of eco pirates who fight for conservation on the Antarctic Ocean.

More on Environmental Films:
American U's Film School Creates Code of Best Practices for Sustainable Filmmaking
SnagFilms Environmental Film Festival
Cameron Diaz's Green Film Club
Flipping Kenya's Coastal Flotsam
Earthwatching: Seen Any Good Green Movies Lately?


Read more (in new window) at: www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/dc-environmental-film-festival.php


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Wind-powered car sets records in a 3,100-mile road test

Two German inventors have created an electric vehicle that recharges the battery through a wind turbine carried in the car. To test the vehicle, the duo recently completed a 3,100-mile trek across Australia.

It is almost like German adventurers Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer saw the latest models of electric cars, and decided to see if they could go out and make the manufacturers feel bad. In a move that will have green aficionados cheering and gearheads gently weeping at the state of the world, a new electric car powered by a wind turbine has just been unleashed into the Australian wilds.


The vehicle, known as the Wind Explorer, uses an electric battery similar to those found in most of the current generation of electric cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, but rather than needing to plug in every night, the Wind Explorer comes standard with a 20-foot retractable bamboo mast that holds a wind turbine to charge the battery. The Wind Runner can also be powered—or perhaps more accurately “dragged”—by a kite, assuming of course that there is ample wind. The result is a lightweight electric car that weighs under 500 pounds and has a top speed of 55 miles an hour, all with close to zero emissions.

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To test their new eco-mobile, the Germans travelled to Australia, where they planned to drive (and sail) the Wind Explorer from the southwestern Australian town of Albany, head east on the southern coast, and arrive in Sydney on the southeastern tip of the continent to the cheers of a handful, and the bewildered stares of most. The entire trip took 18 days, covered 3,100 miles and set a handful of world records, including being the first wind-powered vehicle to cross a continent, the longest overall distance covered for a wind-powered vehicle on land, and the longest distance covered in 36 hours by a wind-powered vehicle, as well as several others in the same vein. The trip across Australia also marks the first nearly emission-free trip across a continent in a vehicle. Even horses, which some might consider green in a sense, emit more pollution from the methane in their waste than the Wind Explorer.




Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer
The Wind Explorer uses an 8kWh lithium-ion battery, similar to what most electric cars are packing; the difference is in the means of charging the battery. Although it has a plug to charge the battery from the power grid, the real focus of the Wind Explorer is the wind turbine. When the car is in need of a charge, the drivers hoist a 20-foot collapsible mast, housed in a special compartment that runs between the driver and passenger seat, and the turbine begins to charge the battery. Once fully charged, the vehicle averaged close to 250 miles before needing to be recharged.

The exact length of time it took to recharge the battery using a wind turbine varies with conditions, but from the grid, it typically recharges at a rate of 20-percent per hour at maximum input.



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Lingering Affects of Gulf Oil Spill

Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Sat Feb 19, 8:53 pm ET


WASHINGTON – Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

"Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

The head of the agency in charge of the health of the Gulf said Saturday that she thought that "most of the oil is gone." And a Department of Energy scientist, doing research with a grant from BP from before the spill, said his examination of oil plumes in the water column show that microbes have done a "fairly fast" job of eating the oil. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientist Terry Hazen said his research differs from Joye's because they looked at different places at different times.

Joye's research was more widespread, but has been slower in being published in scientific literature.

In five different expeditions, the last one in December, Joye and colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and travelled across 2,600 square miles. Some of the locations she had been studying before the oil spill on April 20 and said there was a noticeable change. Much of the oil she found on the sea floor — and in the water column — was chemically fingerprinted, proving it comes from the BP spill. Joye is still waiting for results to show other oil samples she tested are from BP's Macondo well.

She also showed pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling creatures. They included dead crabs and brittle stars — starfish like critters that are normally bright orange and tightly wrapped around coral. These brittle stars were pale, loose and dead. She also saw tube worms so full of oil they suffocated.

"This is Macondo oil on the bottom," Joye said as she showed slides. "This is dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads."

Joye said her research shows that the burning of oil left soot on the sea floor, which still had petroleum products. And even more troublesome was the tremendous amount of methane from the BP well that mixed into the Gulf and was mostly ignored by other researchers.

Joye and three colleagues last week published a study in Nature Geoscience that said the amount of gas injected into the Gulf was the equivalent of between 1.5 and 3 million barrels of oil.

"The gas is an important part of understanding what happened," said Ian MacDonald of Florida State University.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco told reporters Saturday that "it's not a contradiction to say that although most of the oil is gone, there still remains oil out there."

Earlier this month, Kenneth Feinberg, the government's oil compensation fund czar, said based on research he commissioned he figured the Gulf of Mexico would almost fully recover by 2012 — something Joye and Lubchenco said isn't right.

"I've been to the bottom. I've seen what it looks like with my own eyes. It's not going to be fine by 2012," Joye told The Associated Press. "You see what the bottom looks like, you have a different opinion."

NOAA chief Lubchenco said "even though the oil degraded relatively rapidly and is now mostly but not all gone, damage done to a variety of species may not become obvious for years to come."

Lubchenco Saturday also announced the start of a Gulf restoration planning process to get the Gulf back to the condition it was on Apr. 19, the day before the spill. That program would eventually be paid for BP and other parties deemed responsible for the spill. This would be separate from an already begun restoration program that would improve all aspects of the Gulf, not just the oil spill, but has not been funded by the government yet, she said.

The new program, which is part of the Natural Resources Damage Assessment program, is part of the oil spill litigation — or out-of-court settlement — in which the polluters pay for overall damage to the ecosystem and efforts to return it to normal. This is different than paying compensation to people and businesses directly damaged by the spill.

The process will begin with public meetings all over the region.

___

Online:

Joye's website (in new window): http://www.marsci.uga.edu/directory/mjoye.htm

NOAA's restoration site (in new window): http://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov

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Making gas from trash in the office parking lot

WALTHAM, Mass.--Two years after showing off a prototype, IST Energy is ready to ship out the first demo unit of its Green Energy Machine to Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. The machine uses gasification, rather than combustion, to turn garbage into electricity and heat. The gas that it produces can be used in a slightly modified natural gas engine or a diesel generator with some diesel to make electricity. The gas is fed into a boiler to make heat, and heat from the machine can also be captured and used to heat a building.

See related article: Air Force base to gasify waste for energy.


Photo by Martin LaMonica/CNET



Read more (in new window) at: http://news.cnet.com/2300-11128_3-10006438.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz1DBNWu5sJ

Link to article (in new window):
http://news.cnet.com/2300-11128_3-10006438.html?tag=mncol


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