Sunny San Diego's SOLAR 2008 Conference

The 37th annual Solar Conference, SOLAR 2008, will be held in San Diego, 3-8 May 2008 at the Town and Country Resort. That's the older convention center in Mission Valley, just a few miles north east of the airport.

Highlights of the conference will include, keynotes from Van Jones and Senator Gary Hart, and sessions on policy, marketing, technology, community, and best practices for installers.

The Saturday and Sunday all day events are ASES Caucuses, workshops, public-welcome exhibits (200 booths), film screenings, tours, and a plenary session. Monday thru Thursday sessions are open only to registered attendees and are primarily forums and technical sessions.

The two major hurdles blocking widespread adoption of solar panels are the high cost of installation and the absence of government tax incentives. These issues will undoubted be discussed in detail.

San Diego's ISE Corporation designs and builds hybrid-electric drive systems for heavy-duty vehicles such as buses and trams. Since its inception in 1994, ISE has converted a dozen types of large transportation vehicles to run on electric, hybrid-electric, or fuel cell power.

ISE also sells individual subsystems and components, including integrated battery and ultracapacitor packs, motive drive subsystems, auxiliary power units, electrically-driven accessories, and hybrid vehicle control systems.

I learned recently that electric vehicles such as the Chevy Volt are an ideal stepping stone to the hydrogen economy. The Volt is an electrical vehicle with as gas-powered electrical generator backup that can extend the Volt's range beyond 100 miles. The backup could just as easily be a tank of hydrogen with a fuel cell or some other renewable zero emissions system.

In light of this good news, ISE is paving the way to the hydrogen economy future for mass transit. For more information, visit the ISE web site, www.isecorp.com

Solar Water Heating

There was a surge (:-) of solar-powered water heating (SPWH) in the US twenty years ago, but policy makers discontinued the incentives and SPWH fell out of favor. Some countries in Europe, require all new construction houses to install solar-powered water heaters. Why burn expensive non-renewable fossil fuels to heat your water when the sun is shining?

There has been a resurgence of interest in SPWH here in California. A few of the companies in San Diego that will install a SPWH systen are:

• Advanced Solar Technologies
• Butler Sun Solutions
• Horizon Solar Systems
• Mark Naylor Solar Specialists
• Natural Energy Systems
• Son Energy Solar Systems
• Suntrek Industries

This is a growth industry.

High Brow

If you have $1200 burning a hole in your pocket, this Clean Energy Roundtable in La Jolla, April 8-10, looks upbeat and informative.

Hydrogen Highway

The governor of California has proclaimed that there shall be a hydrogen filling station every 20 miles north south along the hydrogen highway. There are twenty filling stations open now, 14 clustered around Los Angeles County, and 6 in the San Francisco vicinity. Ten more will open in early 2008. Most of the hydrogen for these filling station is created by reforming natural gas and then trucked to the filling station. The reforming process releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and so do the trucks. The longer term solution will be on-site hydrogen generation at the filling station, using renewable energy to create electricity which is then used to split water using electrolysis.

A Dozen Hydrogen-powered Cars

GM recently announced their Sequel hydrogen-powered car. I visited the Sequel web site and applied for the pilot program via a long questionnaire. I was notifed immediately that i did not qualify, and later learned from Marc Puckett at United Solar of America that only applicants in Burbank are being considered. I also learned that there are hydrogen bus test programs underway in Palm Springs, Vancouver, and Iceland,

Wondering if GM is the first car manufacturer here in the USA to announce a hydrogen car, I looked in wikipedia expecting to find only a few concept cars. There are a dozen some of which are in production. BMW, Fiat, Chrysler, Mercedes Benz, Peugeot, and several other manufacturers have created one or more models of hydrogen cars.

If you live in Burbank, you can check your eligibility for the Project Driveaway Test program at the Chevrolet web site.

Man-made Fuel

Synthetic genomics is a new research area within the field of synthetic biology that uses gene therapy, genetic modification, or genetic fabrication to create a new life form, ie., a life form that does not exist in nature. In addition to using custom-designed base pair series, genomicists believe it may be possible to use genetic codes other than the four base pairs of DNA that compose all DNA today.

Life forms of immediate interest are those that can be used for fuel products or to process undesirable materials such as sequestered carbon.

With today's genetics technologies, it is straight-forward to construct long base pair chains cheaply and accurately. Researchers can then experiment with, or computationally simulate, these new DNA to see what useful purpose the life form might provide. Scientists believe that there will be a large number of commercially viable applications that will re-invent the production of energy, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and potentially assist with environmental remediation.

Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SG) is a privately-held company with offices in Rockville, Maryland and La Jolla, California. SG is one of the first companies to attempt to develop and commercialize synthetic genomic processes and naturally occurring processes for the production of clean, renewable alternative energy solutions.