Solar Stik: portable, rugged, solar (and wind) generation

Solar Stik, invented by Brian Bosley and in business for about ten years, sells easily deployable solar and solar/wind generators which can be easily daisy-chained into an array. We don’t think there are any other systems with these features.

Solar Stik 100 Terra

Chris Crosby of Solar Stik – a woman of nearly infinite patience, given the number of questions I asked more than once – explained that their systems have their origin in marine applications, and started out with water and wind resistance as baseline design parameters.

All of the non-marine systems (and, I gather, some of those as well) break down into Pelikan cases and can therefore be hand-transported.

The ability to interconnect relieves responders from constant monitoring of charging equipment during an emergency, like having many dishes on single burners with different cooking times.

The system can also accept power from marine/vehicle batteries, AC charging – so it can be kept ready with large reserves; the reverse is true – if the sun is shining and the wind blowing, the swappable Power Paks make it possible to harvest energy while it’s available for later use – and transport it and use the energy where it’s needed. In other words, the emergency power use isn’t limited to charging items immediately adjacent to the solar array – a charged Pak can be transported – that is, carried – to where it’s needed.

We’ll try to follow up on this in the next few days, including some comparisons to other systems. In the meantime, however, this gallery should illustrate some of the attributes of the Solar Stik system(s).

FEMA unveils nationwide phone tree

FEMA has unveiled a nationwide phone tree. From The Onion FEMA unveils nationwide phone tree:

WASHINGTON—The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Monday unveiled its new $48.2 million Phone Tree Response System, a program designed to alert every American in the event of a large-scale disaster. “The safety of our great nation is the responsibility of all 300 million of its citizens, so make sure you memorize the names and phone numbers of the three people you are supposed to call,” said acting FEMA administrator Nancy Ward, who assured reporters that, in the event of a chemical or biological attack, President Obama would be notified first so that he could inform Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Meredith Soto of Winslow, AZ. “Remember: If they don’t pick up, leave a message telling them there’s a national emergency, and then call the next name listed in the 176,935-page, 253-volume directory until someone answers.” According to FEMA officials, regular tests of the phone tree will be conducted on a semiweekly basis to identify any numbers that are no longer in service.

Via The Onion.

We’re relieved that this problem has been solved, allowing us to move onto the next pressing issue.

Louisiana Red Cross chief promoted to new national position

VIA DisasterAccountabiityProject. Steven Ward of 2theAdVocate reports about Vic Howell, CEO of the Red Cross for Louisiana:

Howell, who has been the CEO in Baton Rouge for six years, was named the American National Red Cross Division 4 vice president, said Kendall Hebert, spokeswoman for the area chapter, on Monday. Howell, 64, started his new job Monday. Howell will manage operations for 18 regions with a total of 74 Red Cross chapters in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Illinois. “I’m very excited about the new job, but I made the decision to take it with mixed emotions,” Howell said Monday morning by phone while on his way to Washington, D.C. “I’m excited about the future but hate to leave the local chapter because of all the great working relationships we had with the state,” Howell said. Howell’s other local title was regional executive for American Red Cross Chapters in Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Lake Charles. Hebert said an interim CEO has not yet been named. Chief Operating Officer Bob Wortman will step up his daily duties and assist with chapter operations until a new leader is found. Patrick Mockler, the chapter’s board of directors chairman, was out of town Monday, but Hebert said Mockler will start to form a search committee today to fill Howell’s position. “This is a job we want to fill quickly, especially with the hurricane season coming soon,” Hebert said. Hebert said the chapter hopes to have a new CEO in place as soon as possible, but no date has been set. Howell, who said he will assist the local board in finding his replacement, said he will continue to live in Baton Rouge.

BR Red Cross chief gets national post By Steven Ward of The Advocate. 2theAdvocate is a joint internet project of WBRZ-TV and The Advocate (we believe the leading local daily print publication).

Steven Ward’s archive of work on 2theAdvocate.

Testing: Xmind – promising MindMapping application – plus more

Currently testing XMind, which is a mind-mapping application, but does more than that. We’re still on the upwards slope of the learning curve, and, like many new applications, the help files don’t necessarily anticipate beginners’ questions.(We’d like to see more “markers” – or icons, for instance. And if you can export to HTML, can you edit the HTML file – and how?).

But we think it’s very promising. The free version is very generous – and the paid version – $49/year or $6/month – does have some additional features. More on this as we have time to test it.

International Frequency Coordination for Disaster Responders

I had no idea that the United Nations has already propagated six frequencies (and six repeater pairs), three in VHF, three in UHF, for disaster responders. These frequencies are not, in my experience, common knowledge among commercial radio vendors in the United States, and don’t appear to be referenced on the relevant pages on the FCC website, so it’s possible that we’re not a signatory to the agreement.

Here’s what’s brilliant about this idea – within certain distances along radio bands, it’s critical to have agreed-upon frequencies. And the cost keeps decreasing, as crystal-less, programmable radios which often have 16, 32, 64 or many more “channels” (frequencies or “repeater pairs” – two frequencies combined for signal boosting without feedback). So an international standard for all disaster workers to have at least three channels in common is, in and of itself, excellent policy.

Continue reading →

Ikea's $20 USD solar/LED lamp

Ikea Sunnan Solar/LED lampIkea is now selling its Sunnan lamp, designed by Nicolas Cortolezzis, which is powered by 2 rechargeable AA batteries, included in the $19.99 price. It has the limitation common to consumer solar-powered lighting devices: 9-12 hours of charging on a sunny day will yield 3-4 hours at 400 – 500 lux (Ikea’s product description is ambiguous, and also says that it will then operate at 300 lux).  However, even in winter, it should provide enough light to get through a few hours’ reading or homework – but perhaps not studying for finals.

Thought of another way – thrree or four of these sitting on the most exposed windowsill all day will provide emergency lighting in several rooms. If they’re placed near mirrors – a common practice with lamps before the advent of electricity – their yield will be increased. And even the best emergency flashlight is ill-suited for reading or working.

The market – despite the absence of government encouragement for eight years – has delivered a reasonably priced emergency household light. IKEA, for its part, doesn’t even mention this use. We’d like to see them price them even lower in bundles. (The Sunnan lam is available in stores and not via the IKEA website).

And it’s ready now – no need to wait for a smart grid, or your local utility to go green, or the government to provide interest-free loans for a PV panel on your roof.

Continue reading →

Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorized

Via Cryptome. This statute has been reauthorized. Our limited understanding is that it makes the United States government the guarantor of insurance company losses due to terror atttacks over certain threshold amounts. Whether there’s a moral hazard – discouraging insurers and insureds from taking preventive and mitigating measures – we don’t know. We hope to return to this issue shortly. Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization.


					

		
		
	

							
	
							
	

				

			
						

				Coal Plant With Carbon Sequestration
			

								


				

			
Follow LJF97 on Twitter Tweet  SCS Energy, of Concord, Mass., wants to build a new coal plant in Linden, NJ.


18cleanmap According to Kate Galbraith, reporting in the NY Times, “A Plan for U. S. Emissions to Be Buried Under Sea“, 90% of the carbon dioxide will be captured, compressed, pumped thru a 24 inch diameter pipe, approximately 70 miles south-east, past Staten Island, New York, and Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean Counties in New Jersey, to a point 25 or 30 miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey,and injected by a well drilled a mile beneath the sandstone floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic is about a half mile deep at that point.


Gailbraith reports that the plant could cost $5 billion if completed on time and on budget. And it will need $100 million a year in Federal Government subsidies, which amounts to another $4 billion over the plant’s 40 year operating life span.


The carbon sequestration is projected to use 25%  to 40% of the energy released from burning coal, so the 750 megawatt plant will be a 450 to 562.5 mw plant.  That’s $16 Billion to $20 Billion per gigawatt or $16 to $20 per watt, depending on the overhead costs, of sequestering the carbon.


Solar is roughly $6.50 per watt with no subsidies, no fuel costs, very low maintenance, and no loss in transmission. Offshore Wind is $3.00 per watt, with no fuel costs.


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				Tom Mouat: MapSymbs application for military GIS
			

								


				

			
Symbol frame for hostile units.png


Tom Mouat has produced current NATO map symbols as a font set called MapSymbs which is in fact used by NATO member countries. Popular Logistics editor and artist/animator/engineer Garry Osgood (Particular Art; site under construction) is currently experimenting with the construction of an icon set to be used as tools for planning and communication for disaster planning, modeling, and response. Initial efforts – since our focus is on social networks – is to use the conventions of the Universal Markup Language. [Because it’s not a “web-safe” font, the following images are not taken directly from MapSymbs.


More – including sample images – after the jump.  Continue reading →

					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				100 MPG Plug In Hybrid
			

								


				

			
100 MPG Plug In Electric Van
100 MPG Plug In Electric Van. Designed by Bright Automotive and Rocky Mountain Institute. Image Copyright (C) Rocky Mountain Institute.


Bright Automotive of Indiana is set to turn Rocky Mountain Institute’s lightweight, hyper-efficient vehicle concept into reality.


The start-up, which launched out of RMI in 2008, is unveiling the IDEA–a 100 mpg equivalent plug-in hybrid concept vehicle–in Washington DC. Bright expects to produce 50,000 IDEAs a year, by 2012 and to create over 5,000 jobs by 2013.  For more details go to Rocky Mountain Institute and Bright Automotive.


The best news since the Prius.

					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				Eco-Watts v Killer-Watts
			

								


				

			
Burning fossil fuels and using nuclear power create tremendous waste problems.  Harnessing the sun, the wind, and the heat of the earth use energy with no fuel – therefore no pollution. The question is Eco-Watts v Killer-Watts. The choice is ours!


Back in the late ‘1970’s Amory Lovins , a physicist, coined the term “NegaWatts” to describe the energy that could be saved with conservation and efficiency. “The cheapest energy,” he said, “and the cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use.” A negawatt is a unit of power not consumed.


Lovins’ associate, Marvin Resnikoff, PhD, another physicist, currently at Radioactive Waste Management Associates, then teaching environmental thinking at SUNY University of Buffalo – Rachel Carson College, used the term “nuclear constipation” to describe the nuclear waste problem. It’s an apt metaphor – the waste doesn’t go away.


We are struggling not only with nuclear constipation, but carbon constipation. We burn carbon to get from place to place, to heat and cool our homes. But the carbon doesn’t go away. It goes into the air from under the ground. To paraphrase Al Gore,


We are borrowing from China to buy oil from the middle east and pull coal out of the ground to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. But enough wind blows through the midwest corridor in a day, enough sunlight falls on the earth in FORTY MINUTES to provide the power we need for a year.


Harnessing the wind, the sun, and the earth eliminates these problems. Rather than burning a fuel; wind, solar, and geothermal harness a process. The sun shines whether or not we use solar panels to capture some photons. The wind blows regardless of our decision to use a few particles to spin a turbine. We are hitchin’ a ride on a moving train.


Negawatts – units of power not consumed.


Eco-watts – units of power generated by clean energy systems, by harnessing a process rather than consuming a fuel.



Killer-watts – units of power generated by consuming a fuel, which produces a quantity of pollution, such as carbon dioxide, radioactive wastes, mercury, arsenic, etc.

					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				Congratulations to Belmar, NJ’s first CERT team
			

								


				

			
Belmar, New Jersey has just graduated its first CERT class, and has started to recruit a second. Belmar, sensibly, takes an approach that makes it easy for participants to complete the one night per week/eight week program, apparently also providing gear rather than making new volunteers find their own (and, alas, often get fleeced in the process). The next class will start in the fall – anyone interested can contact the CERT head, Dennis Ryan on this page.


Interestingly, Belmar has added CPR and defibrillation to the curriculum, not normally part of the standard program (on the assumption that CPR and defib are best used when there is an expectation of imminent hospital and/or ALS ambulance care – often absent in mass casualty incidents.


We note that with its first class of 27, if it graduates and holds four equal-sized classes, Belmar will equal San Francisco in per capita participation in CERT/NERT by citizens and residents.

					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				Swine Flu Outbreak coverage
			

								


				

			
For the  lion’s share of urgent posts here – reports about contemporaneous threats – I;m lucky to have good access to a  number of physicians, medical  personnel epidemiologists and other informants. cynthia-rowley-cdc-photo-influenza-10072


But the single most useful resource is the blog The Pump Handle What’s more, Liz Borkowski and  Celeste Monforton, two of the Pump Handle Posse,  have been generous to us,answering questions and helping us out.


Ms. Borkowski is recommending Effect Measure’s coverage of the current influenza outbreak. We may yet be able to add some detail as things develop –  but if you want to stay on top of the issue – get on over to Effect Measure’.