The St. Olaf wind turbine was erected this morning adding a new landmark to the face of Northfield, Minnesota. The 1.65 megawatt turbine is located just west of St. Olaf’s campus. The new addition makes Northfield a two turbine town. Check out the St. Olaf Turbine blog and learn more about the colleges effort toward sustainable operation.

On Watt’s Weekly, a web site and podcast devoted to energy discussion and news, Ben was running around his apartment testing all of his appliances with the Kill A Watt™. This little device is a power monitor. You can plug in anything to display how much power it consumes. It was interesting to hear just how much energy random house-hold appliances use. You can listen to Ben’s Podcast here », ( mp3).

If you are planning a remote solar energy set-up this device would help you map out your power consumption. It will reveal your phantom loads too… appliances that suck power even when their not on. This is a tool for being more conscious about your energy use. We don’t think about it often, but there are tons of electronics leaching power right now in our homes… do they need to be?

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The 17th annual Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair is coming up! It will be held at the ReNew the Earth Institute, MREA’s educational facility, in Custer, Wisconsin, June 23-25, 2006.

Fair Hours:
Friday, June 23rd- 9am to 7pm
Saturday, June 24th- 9am to 7pm
Sunday, June 25th- 9am to 5pm
Even though the Fair is ‘closed’, evening entertainment takes place until 11:30pm.

Expanding the Know-How - Expanding the Market

Windustry will host the Community Wind Energy 2006 Conference, March 7-8th at the Iowa Events Center, Des Moines, Iowa.

Maryland’s House. Photo credit: Stefano Paltera / Solar Decathlon

The 2005 Solar Decathlon took place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., October 7-16th 2005. The event featured 18 collegiate teams from across the U.S, Canada, Puerto Rico and Spain.
The teams designed, built, operated and monitored small super-efficient solar homes. The Sun’s energy powered day-to-day activities- including driving around in electric cars.

The Univeristy of Colorado created a
‘Petroleum Alternative’ Building System called The BioS(h)IP. This building is a Net Zero Energy Home (NZEH) that makes use of what I would call high-tech natural building materials. The Colorado team unveiled the innovative new product called called BIO-SIPs, a biobased structural insulated panels. Net Zero Energy buildings create as much energy as they use on an annual basis. All of these buildings were off the grid, so they would have to create all the power needed for consumption. The BioS(h)IP will find a permanent home in the Solar Village, part of the Prospect New Town housing development, in Longmont, Colorado.

I’m glad to see students have created housing that can be powered by clean renewable energy. After all, the large constant nuclear explosion 887,000,000 miles away happens to power our solar system… why not our house hold appliances? I can’t wait to see what they come up with in 2007.