January 11th 2007
Good morning
I already got Nell to do the dishes for me this morning. Dang I should have gotten her to do the story too. Thanks honey. She is off to work so I guess it is up to me. I attended the NMSynergy meeting last night. Very interesting group. We are part of the NMSEA or Solar Energy Association of New Mexico. NMSynergy is the group which puts on the Synergy Fest each Spring. I will be helping with the Synergy Fest this year although I don't know for sure what I can do that would be a help. We are having another meeting this Sunday to brainstorm with others interested in producing this years Synergy Fest. The main promoters are graduating from NMHU this year so new leaders will need to be trained and groomed for the Synergy Fest. I don't see myself as a leader, so I asked them if they had something for morons to do to help.
Seeing first hand the current mover and shaker, Justin Kaysing's energy level, I can tell his is going to be a difficult act to follow. Plus, he is very active at Highlands University, constantly making connections with students, student senate and faculty for support from the college. Plus, there is a gigantic sponsorship base, I see that not only do local merchants give generously to the fest, New Belgium Brewing Co. also gave quite a bit of money. Hmmm, this is the same beer joint that in effect sponsors the otherpower wind turbine shop up n Colorado. Wheels are turning in my head that I didn't even know I had.
We like beer. Justin is going to ask NMHU president if a beer vendor could have a booth this year. I think this would be awesome. Nothing gargantuan, perhaps a Renaissance look, a little thatched roof booth and whatnot. Oh yeah, they're going to be happy they have my input for this year's event. Also, this Sunday we'll be talking about bands. I would like to see John Gold's bluegrass band this year. I am pretty excited to get involved with the Synergy Fest. We had a really good time last year. Yeah, a Renaissance festival look, we all dress up in pointed toed slippers with little bells, it'll be fun. Right. you can see NMSynergy website here: http://www.synergyfest.com/
One of the new people at the meeting built a Axial Flux Wind Turbine from Hugh Piggott's plans. Well I don't know if he is new, I'm new, but I just met him. Eric is a contractor building solar and green residential and commercial. He wrote to me a couple of weeks ago about a WVO truck he has. It is a pleasure to meet him. I asked about the turbine. He said a buddy of his is building these wind turbines in remote areas of Nicaragua. While this friend was in the states last Summer he stayed with Eric and held a small workshop and built his wind turbine. It is a 85 foot monopole tower with 10 foot props. He thought it was around 500 watts, but he hasn't turned it on yet. He said he ran short of funds and was unable to get an inverter. I asked him if he meant the rectifier? He said the rectifier was up by the alternator. Hmm, I thought the rectifier was on the bottom so we could shunt the props and shut the wind turbine down. He said that it is shunted, however it was done, because without a load (batteries to charge) it would spin out of control, which it isn't doing.
Cool though, someone here has one of these wind turbines like we are going to build. Yeah, I like this group. I'm meeting lots of new, like-minded and thus very interesting people. One direction the group wants to head is setting up an energy consultant to do waste analysis on homes, especially low income households. What does this mean? We will help people who can not afford it themselves to insulate their homes. This fits quite nicely with ideas we have been kicking around at Peace and Justice committee group. Now with the connection to NMSEA we can get help lobbying Santa Fe to make provisions to help people make their homes more efficient. I've been soapboxing this for a long time; The road to sustainability is through reduction of energy use, not alternative energies. How we got here is we were talking in the last meeting about retrofitting passive solar to existing homes. This we all agreed must be preceded by basic energy reductions around the house.
I like the way this group thinks. We want to help people who may not know a problem exists. We quickly whittled the process into something workable.
Sure we would like to see photovotaics on every house in the southwest, but first let's take a look a the seals around the doors and windows.
I'll keep you updated
Obviously
Brian Rodgers
