A couple of weeks back I talked about how Portland, Oregon was developing a system of plug-in hybrid vehicle recharging stations. Well, now, I’ve learned that Portland is once again the site of a new kind of alternative energy technology, this time solar. Solar-powered Information Access Points (IAP) are being developed by Vibrant City Technology.

The IAPs are outdoor, self-powered kiosks that contain community mapping software. The vandal-proof self-powered GPRS internet assembly kit can be assembled by two people in less than an hour (none of the components weigh more than 130 pounds). The IAPs do not require drilling into concrete and relocating power lines to locate.

The benefits to tourists, locals and anyone else walking the streets of Portland will be that they can quickly and easily find restaurants, nightclubs, shopping, sports stadiums and more using the directions from the mapping software.

The solar panels on top of the kiosk are connected to a battery system that consists of eight 198 amp / hour 6-volt batteries run both in parallel and series to create four large 12-volt sealed gel batteries. As well as provide power to the unit, they also serve as a ballast.

The prototype shown in the photo above (of what it may look like sometime in the near future) was developed by Jacob Mestman and Phil Wells who wish to capitalize on the wave of social networking, which appears to be moving in the direction of local community with the onset of hyper-local social network business directories (Yelp, Yahoo Local, Google walking directions, etc.).

They believe that delivering the internet to street corners and community spaces in urban areas will be an asset to communities and are now identifying four test locations within the downtown Portland area for the IAPs.

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Exotic car maker, Lotus has decided to go green with a couple new biofuel concepts. Both the Concept Ice Vehicle (CIV) and Omnivore concept run on biofuels based upon alcohol.

The Lotus Concept Ice Vehicle (pictured) was specifically designed for the Moon Regan TransAntarctic Expedition. The Lotus CIV will help researchers move from point A to B quickly and avoid crevasses in the ice along the way using specially designed radar. The vehicle will also call awareness to global warming issues and the importance of going green.

The Lotus Concept Ice Vehicle has a propeller on back and three skis to help it navigate the difficult Antarctic terrain. The biofuel engine is mounted directly behind the cockpit and attached to the tri-blade propeller.

Lotus has also announced a partnership with Jaguar to design a next generation single cylinder biofuel engine called the Omnivore. The two stroke engine will be developed for running bioalcohol as its main fuel source.

Direct fuel injection plus novel engine architecture will help the Omnivore produce the highest possible fuel efficiencies according to Lotus. Vehicle modeling software will be uses to analyze the reduction in CO2 emissions.

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Last year Michigan put up their first onshore wind farm. Now, it looks like wind power will go offshore in the Saginaw Bay area of Lake Huron. I’ve talked before about wind turbines heading for open water in Norway and perhaps even off the East Coast.

But, now the windy Great Lakes region may start to be populated by powerful generators of renewable energy. A man named Steve Smiley (how can you not like this name?) envisions the Saginaw Bay area of east Michigan sprouting wind power in the near future.

Smiley has already helped construct two other wind turbines in Michigan in the Mackinaw and Traverse areas. According to the local wind maps that show where consistent corridors of high winds prevail, the territory they harbor is over the water.

According to Smiley, part of the infrastructure to build the needed wind turbines exists in Flint, Michigan which will make the residents there plus Michael Moore very happy people. I’ve talked in the past about combining wind and water turbines in one platform where both the air and watery currents would support it.

This probably won’t happen in Saginaw Bay, which is relatively shallow. But, finally, someone is taking notice that the windy Great Lakes region makes sense for wind farms both onshore and offshore. Now, if we can just get the same enthusiasm along the Gulf Coast region we’d be in business.

T. Boone Pickens is calling for wind farms from Texas northward to Canada. And, if we can get people to put up residential wind turbines nationwide, this country will be the air apparent to so much renewable energy, in the future, the Saudis will be left standing, with sad faces, in pools of their own oil.

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Free energy has been a buzzword for many years and now with high gas prices and the increasing cost of other methods for producing electricity, the term has gotten red hot. People want free energy almost as if it were a birthright of simply being human.

And, as such there are many marketers tapping into this desire. No, no one has come up with a perpetual motion machine yet based upon magnets or using water to power 100-percent of a car. But, marketers are using free energy giveaways to tap into the green movement that has taken on a life of its own recently.

For example, 1,000 employees in the Heavenly Mountain Resort of California will receive free energy efficient CFL light bulbs so that they may cut down on electricity consumption. Verdiem is now offering free energy monitoring software for consumers called Edison that can be installed upon your PC.

The advantage of Edison it that you can pre-configure power consumption in your PC such as powering down your computer when no one is around, turning off the display or suspending the computer. Many computers already come with power-saving features, but this one will give you options and tell you how much power consumption and dollars you’ll save on a yearly basis.

Mitsubishi has just come out with a product named Ecodan that will use free energy from the outside air for heating and cooling the interior of one’s home. Of course, there are other ways to get free energy such as with renewables like solar, wind and geothermal.

But, sometimes saving energy means free energy as the examples above show. Free energy saving tips such as insulating attics and water heaters, cutting down on water consumption, and using one’s basement as a source for geothermal heating and cooling can many times be worth their weight in gold. And, that is just so green, now isn’t it?

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If you’ve purchased an HHO eBook through this site or another site, chances are that you will need a little support in order to optimize your system for your particular vehicle. While some people are mavericks and like to go it totally alone, others find comfort and inspiration in community.

That’s why I thought I would present here the top 5 support forums for those either wanting to build or having built HHO generators.

1. OUPower is one of the most technical groups regarding HHO generators. Many have started with an HHO eBook and proceeded to built a better mousetrap and talk about it here.
2. Fuel Saver offers a section of its forum for Brown’s Gas Systems where users share their triumphs and failures regarding building and optimizing their HHO gas generators.
3. Yahoo Water Car Group is one of the oldest if not the oldest group, which started as a place to talk about Daniel Dingel’s work. This group, however has evolved into a DIY group where people share what has worked for them in regard to HHO technology and what has not.
4. HHO Info is a relatively new group but is already very active and is dedicated to those who build HHO generators. This site has the look and feel of one of the Web’s main HHO destinations in the very near future.
5. Water Fueling is a relatively new message board that looks to be less technically oriented than the other forums. One section that some will find particularly useful, however is the Find a Local Installer category for those who want to pay a qualified mechanic to do the dirty work.

When one is reading an HHO eBook and then decides to build their first prototype, its good to know that support is just a mouse click away. These are the most helpful HHO communities that I have been able to find online and they have help many garage inventors get over the hump and improve their hydrogen gas savers immensely.

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In a week where the top two presidential candidates are struggling over energy policy for this country, Barack Obama calls for 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) to be on the road by 2015. This is five years shorter than some other estimates.

Not only does Obama want 1 million PHEVs on the road but he wants them to average around 150 mpg as well. The new energy plan will include $4 billion in tax credits to automakers to retool their production plants for PHEVs.

The plan also calls for a $7,000 tax credit for consumers who are early adopters of PHEVs and half of all cars purchased by the federal government (who has the largest fleet) by the year 2012 will be PHEVs.

The plan also calls for a $1,000 energy rebate to U. S. consumers to help pay for higher gas prices and the funds for this rebate will come from higher taxes on record setting oil company profits. Exxon Mobile has just posted $11.68 billion this past quarter as the largest quarterly profits ever by any U. S. corporation.

Earlier this week I had talked about how the city of Portland, Oregon was getting ready for the influx of PHEVs by installing recharging stations throughout the city. With this kind of political will behind PHEVs you can expect to see many other cities across the nation soon follow suit and installing recharging stations to take advantage of this current political climate of solving this country’s energy crisis now rather than later.

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Portland General Electric (PGE), based in Portland, Oregon is rolling out a dozen recharging stations in the area for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). This is in anticipation of several major automakers including GM and Toyota rolling out their PHEVs by 2010.

The recharging stations are powered by 100-percent renewable energy and are free to use during the testing phase. The first station went live at the PGE headquarters on July 29, 2008 and replaced an electric car only station that was placed there in 1996.

The purpose of putting up the PHEV charging infrastructure in advance is to encourage this technology to come to fruition. Since Portland, Oregon has the highest per capita users of hybrid vehicles in the U. S., PGE think that PHEVs will be a hit here as well.

The recharging stations are also equipped with smart meter technology so that conceivably the PHEVs could actually sell power back to the grid during peak load times. Some of the planned locations for the recharging stations include Burgerville, the Marriott Hotel and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Though this is clearly motivated by self-interest, it will also help the early adoption of PHEVs in the area and may spur other electric companies to follow suit. And, this makes a lot more sense than PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) in northern California putting up a hydrogen fueling station which clearly goes against self-interest.

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The Scuderi split-cycle air hybrid internal combustion engine may just be the next big thing in automotive technology. Move over battery electric hybrid, PHEVs, FCVs and other alternative fuel vehicles. The Scuderi ICE may just be the better mousetrap for which car manufacturers have been waiting.

The Scuderi air hybrid uses split-cycle paired cylinders for power. According to independent third party validation, the efficiency of a Scuderi engine is around 40-percent compared with 33-percent on a standard internal combustion engine (ICE). Toxic emissions are also reduced by 80-percent.

What makes the Scuderi different than a typical ICE? The Scuderi air hybrid uses a power stroke on every revolution, fires after top dead center, has a flame speed 4 times faster than conventional ICE and uses compressed air to store energy rather than a battery.

The Scuderi air-hybrid also is knock resistant, has a helical crossover passage that helps with the appropriate mixture of gasoline and air, unique spark plug location that promotes more complete combustion of fuel and less emissions, plus it has a fast action variable valve configuration.

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This is not a political endorsement in any way. I think we all know who the top competitors in this two horse race are right now. But, I found it interesting that one dark horse candidate named John Campbell is running as the Hydrogen President in 08.

On one of John Campbell’s several websites he says, “My most important achievement as president will be transforming the American economy from oil to hydrogen. The crown jewel of my administration will be the hydrogen car. By December 31, 2012, every new car that leaves a showroom in America—will be hydrogen-powered. I will take the lead in helping you—the American people—to get us there. Then on New Year’s Eve 2012, we will truly have something to celebrate and be proud of. We will have cracked the hydrogen code.”

The official name of Campbell’s project is called “Cracking the Hydrogen Code.” Now, while the other lead candidates are talking about the war in Iraq and the economic recession that we’re trying to claw our way back up from, I find it refreshing that one candidate has a singular, transformative platform as his agenda.

This isn’t to say that a person should endorse a candidate one any one platform alone, but at least we know where John Campbell stands on this issue. There is no flip-flopping or taking back what he has said. Now, if he only had a shot at Vice President, we could team him up with Al Gore and truly make a difference in this country in the realm of an alternative energy shift in this country.

Some will say the Hydrogen President is full of hot air. I will say that he is just a little ahead of his time.

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So, as I’m cruising around the Internet researching alternative energy news stories today, I stumbled across one odd solar-powered device in the headlines after another. Some of these photovoltaic devices are rough prototypes delivered by school kids while others are odd solar powered devices that may be used in developing nations.

Summer camp kids at the NOVA School in Olympia, Washington tried their hands at inventing several different kinds of solar-powered devices. My favorites of course, are the solar-powered cheese factory and the solar-powered catapult. And, indeed this catapult wasn’t filled with iron balls or diseased carcasses like those used by Romans or in Medieval times. Perhaps, it was even filled with cheese.

A useful solar-powered device created for use in developing national comes from a German student who was visiting Tanzania two years back. This student came up with the idea for a solar-powered ECG (electrocardiogram) machine that doesn’t rely on electricity and can be used by doctors in remote areas. A few photovoltaic cells mounted on top of the ECG unit and mated to a lead acid battery and it’s good to go.

Another useful device for developing nations is the solar-powered GSM tower. A company called VNL has developed the GSM tower for telecommunication in Africa, which is powered by solar with a 72-hour backup battery also powered by the sun. The solar GSM tower uses up to 1/60 the power of a regular GSM towered plus it has a smaller environmental footprint as well.

If you haven’t heard of any of these solar-powered devices, don’t worry, you will. Solar power is mainstreaming itself at such a rapid pace now it will be under our noses in all sorts of unexpected places before the blink of an eye. And, with a few more blinks from millions of people, solar will no longer be considered alternative energy. It may just be the primary energy source from Main Street to Wall Street to the far corners of the Earth in just a very short time.

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