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Tom Manson and Lance Schafhausen are now friends

July 7

Tom Manson and J. Brown are now friends

March 18

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March 18

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March 18

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March 17

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Profile Information

Are you interested in becoming an organizer in your area?

Yes

Tell us about your experience with alternative energy:

I am an aerospace engineer (Electrical/Systems) and have worked extensively with space-quality solar array and power supplies. way back when, in college, I contributed to a group project creating a solar powered still that created alcohol from grass clippings. I am anxious about finding alternative sources in our local area.

What excites you about this campaign?

It is not so much excitement as it is concern about the potential loss of national fuels.

What do you want to do to help?

I don't know enough about what is needed to say, although I do live half a mile from the BP Solar company (used to be Solarex). I have been anxious lately to visit the plant and see what high quantity price options are available from BP Solar.

We need to get busy

I am going to start organizing locally if only to find ideas of what we can do as a community. Many of us are unsure of what we can do (aside from talking to others about the plan). I think while spreading the word is great, some of us want to do more.

My personal plan is to get folks together and find our what skills/capabilities that we have as a group. As an example, I live about half a mile from the BP Solar plant southwest of Frederick. They are expanding right now and I'll bet they might be receptive to talking to us about implementing solar collector "farms" (like the one I saw in Marathon in the Keys this past November).

There is a lot we can do and we at least need to understand what is out there and what we can do (from a small mid-Atlantic town/county), and what each of might be able to do to help.

Tom Manson's Blog

Efficiency

Efficiency is probably the key to our best bet for energy collection and conservation. For some time I have been "banking" on the use of photovoltaic solar array primarily because I know a lot about them from my professional space experience. Unfortunately it turns out that their production may not be the most efficient and "green" approach to alternative energy. A very recent (for me) innovation is the evacuated tube solar collector. This is a tube (not physically unlike a fluorescent light tub… Continue

Posted on March 12, 2009 at 3:30pm —

Using lots of Power

Well the Power Monitor has revealed lots of good information - mostly how much power my appliances consume. The power factor is a significant issue, and I need to go back to my ac books to remember how to deal with PF and reactive loads. What is very obvious though is that I have some potentially wasteful consumers, especially in this cold weather (cold for central Maryland).

Another thought that I have been dwelling on is the transfer of solar energy. I have not studied the efficiency of solar… Continue

Posted on March 3, 2009 at 5:41am —

Home Power Monitor

I purchased and installed a Black and Decker Power Monitor yesterday. It works pretty good, but as little power as we use at home, it is slow in responding. It's downfall (in my opinion) is that has to wait for the black bar on the electric meter to go by the sensor. If the wheel is moving slowly, it can take almost 10 seconds for the bar to pass. Until that happens the monitor assumes that the power has not changed from the last reading. It's only other detriment (IMHO) is that reads in $$. I w… Continue

Posted on February 28, 2009 at 6:00pm —

Energy Summit

Watching the Summit Monday morning was an amazingly educational event for me. I was not aware of all the history of the participants. I was not aware of all the obstacles to the creating and the distributing alternate energy. I was not aware of the prospect of distributing electricity via dc instead of ac as has been done from the beginning. I did not realize the obstacles in adding and extracting to/from that "grid." In that regard I was significantly impressed with Sec'y Chu's contribution to… Continue

Posted on February 24, 2009 at 6:53pm —

Purpose for Being (on PickensPlan)

I am continuously leaning toward the idea that there are two kinds of posters here in PickenPlan (PP). There are of course the proponents ("administration" of the PP including T. Boone, and other leadership) that prompt members to communicate with Congress, and watch the various political boradcasts, etc. And there are self-promoting advertisers.

The purpose of the PP page is of course to get the word out and T. Boone and his minion/leadership do a good job of that and it makes sense that they… Continue

Posted on February 23, 2009 at 4:50am —

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At 12:31pm on March 18, 2009, Eric Koch said…: your cappabillitys are impressive and admirable...and i feel graditude for your extention of assistance....being that it's a tooling one off i can afford to bypass precition evaluation via a significant margin of over enginering...as i move tward repeatable component systems,i may find my self remided that i'm glad to know you.

thanks, mr.e

At 9:00pm on March 17, 2009, Eric Koch said…: that's it....i'm screwed....the "cathode resistor" is going to force a value swap domino effect through the whole circuit that is going to result in the driver board being out of its operating region.

help.

At 8:08pm on March 17, 2009, Eric Koch said…: Ok....i'm going to build my own latch with a couple of transistors....the thing is i already made the board and it's drilled for a TO-92....so now i gotta frankenstein this contraption in there along with the cathode resistor i need to add to make it work....shesh.

At 6:47pm on March 17, 2009, Eric Koch said…: yeah....that's where i order from too...it's kidna nice the parts get shiped from the twin citys and get here in two days....

but what do i do with the other 999 parts?

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=TCR22-3-ND

At 5:24pm on March 17, 2009, J. Brown said…: No connection with the Space Center - I've been working in the energy business for 30 yrs - IT enterprise system designer. I do whole systems OD design, hence the continuing connection to the entire system - the universe.
In a former lifetime I was in CalTech's Planetary Science Dept - JPL connection, not Houston.

At 2:04pm on March 17, 2009, Eric Koch said…: might have been a minor misunderstanding due to wordage...don't sweat it,that invite whent out to my whole list...just keeping things tight on my end...gotta stay on task.

At 8:53pm on March 16, 2009, Eric Koch said…: Hey Tom,

just checkin in to see how your doin'....i imagine by now your looking for the smallest earth source heat pump you can find to store excess summer heat for recovery in the winter months.

any way i'm at a stand still....what ever happened to radio shack?...nine times out of ten i end up throwing up my arms and walking out empty handed..they just don't carry much any more.

all i need is one SCR....just one. i tell ya.

At 3:56pm on March 13, 2009, Eric Koch said…: I'm glad your thinking about an electro/thermal Hybrid solar system...it really does make more sence for us cold climate people.

take care, and good luck with your exciting project...gotta get back to work on mine now...thumbs up:)

At 9:05am on March 13, 2009, Eric Koch said…: Amonia?....learn something new every day,thanks...wile i can see the benifits of amonia (i think it has a higher thermal cappacity than water,right?) i also see it as a problematic substance.

but if PEX tubing can handle it...ya know what i meen? PEX is simple quick and flexible...and plumbing is "circuitry" too...a guy like you should be able to make the transition like it's a walk in the park.

At 9:50am on March 12, 2009, Eric Koch said…: This looks like a good reference...might help eliminate unknowns in your equations.

http://www.realgoods.com/product/water-heating-pumping/solar+hot+water/parts-accessories/solar+water+heating.do