AFM Tree Stripper (2;25) impressively destructive...



Reminds me of "The Leveller" in the 1992 animated movie "Ferngully"...




IMDB's plot summary

Living Off-Grid: Our Micro Hydro Alternative Energy System

We are fortunate to live on rural mountain property in Northern California with a creek that is not seasonal, although the volume of water does drop significantly during the arid months of summer. The beauty of hydro power is that it produces power 24 hours a day and is not dependent upon weather patterns, such as sun and wind. The drawbacks are having to maintain the system by cleaning the intake and dealing with varying creek flows.

17 years ago, my alternative power system consisted of one solar panel, one golf cart battery, one DC light, and one DC car stereo. Today, I live in a modern off-the-grid home complete with many large energy-using electrical appliances, such as a washing machine, air conditioner, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, and baseboard heaters. Using these appliances off-the-grid is only possible by limiting their usage to one at a time, with the exception of the refrigerator (which remains on 24 hours a day). Unlike grid-connected homes, where it is common to see multiple large loads running simultaneously, most people living-off-the grid cannot run their washing machine while vacuuming, their heaters while washing dishes, etc. Alternative home energy systems are limited to the amount of power stored in the battery bank and what is being currently produced via wind, water, and/or sun for available power. Since hydro systems provide power continuously, the battery bank does not need to be as large as with other alternative energy systems.



Our system consist of approximately 2500 feet of two inch PVC pipe from intake to turbine. We “borrow” water from our creek which is diverted back to the creek after running through the turbine. At the bottom of the pipe, we have 230 PSI for our static water pressure (valve closed, not running). Our dynamic pressure (running pressure) changes to 185 PSI from pipe friction loss. Four inch pipe would greatly reduce this friction loss; however, the cost is prohibitive for us.

We run a turgo wheel coupled to a three phase induction motor that produces 220 volt, unregulated, “wild” AC power, which is sent long distance (1500 feet) from the creek to our power shed. This power cannot be used directly in appliances because it is unregulated, but it can be used for baseboard heaters and diversion loads, such as a hot water heating element. Our system differs from most micro hydro systems which produce DC power requiring the turbine be located close to the home because of line loss and cable size needed for direct current. To get the most head (vertical fall from intake to turbine), our wheel has to be located at the bottom of our property or else we would make very little power using a traditional DC micro hydro system close to our home (200 watts). With micro hydro systems, high head is more important than water flow for producing maximum power. Low head, high flow is hard to harness.



Once the “wild” electricity reaches our power shed, it is transformed and rectified to DC battery voltage and stored in our batteries like a typical alternative energy system. We then invert the power back to regulated alternating current through an inverter to use in our home. Excess power when the batteries are full is diverted to baseboard heaters in the house in winter and heat sink in the power shed in summer.

We make about 2 KWH continuously with our micro-hydro system. This is ample power for a family of four using CFLs, energy-saving appliances, etc.; however, there are times when our power is down: large winter storms that fill the creek with leaves, and push the intake out of the water; creek levels drop in the summer and the dam needs rebuilding, etc. One thing that is nice about having your own power system is that when it is down, it is within your own power to go and fix. You don’t have to wait for the power company to rescue you, but this often means you are standing waste deep in freezing water during a storm. This whole micro-hydro system costs approximately $11,000, including pipe, wire, inverter, batteries, etc., but we haven’t paid a bill to a a power company in over 17 years!

Source

MIT Unveils 90 MPH Solar Race Car

MIT's latest solar race car might look like a funky Ikea table with a hump, but don't laugh. It'll do 90 mph and is packed with technology that may end up in the hybrids and EVs the rest of us will soon be driving.

The university's Solar Electric Vehicle Team, the oldest such team in the country, unveiled the $243,000 carbon-fiber racer dubbed Eleanor on Friday and is shaking the car down to prepare for its inaugural race later this year.

"It drives beautifully," said George Hansel, a freshman physics major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the team. "It's fun to drive and quite a spectacle."

Eleanor is slated to compete in the tenth World Solar Challenge, a seven-day race across nearly 2,000 miles of Australian outback.

Vehicles competing in the endurance race may look hopelessly impractical, but the competition is a test bed for batteries, motor technology and power-management systems that may eventually appear in hybrids and electric vehicles. Like Formula 1 and other big-budget motor sports, the solar challenge helps develop some of the vehicles we see in showrooms.

"It pushes the technology from the books to real life," said Spencer Quong, senior vehicles analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It opens the industry's eyes to how to build a more efficient vehicle."

Like, say, the Chevrolet Volt range-extended EV, the forthcoming electric car that General Motors has all but bet its future on.

The Volt is a direct descendant of the Sunraycer solar car General Motors developed with AeroVironment and Hughes Aircraft in 1987. Sunraycer smoked the rest of the grid in the inaugural World Solar Challenge, raising quite a few eyebrows back in Detroit.

"The unexpected success of the Sunraycer made GM leadership take notice as to what might be technologically possible," said Jon Bereisa, a longtime member of GM's advanced-propulsion team who is now working on the Volt. "It finished the race across Australia a full three days ahead of its competitors, powered by an electric motor that consumed as much power as a hair dryer, at speeds up to 45 mph, and the solar-powered batteries were still fully charged."

GM execs were impressed enough to greenlight the Impact concept car, which became the groundbreaking EV1 electric car. GM famously killed the EV1 in 2003, but the car lives on in the Volt, which is slated for production by the end of next year.

"One might say sunlight and solar started a bright idea after all," Bereisa said.

MIT's solar team entered its first race in 1987, and Eleanor is its 10th car. A change in the rules requiring drivers to sit upright instead of stretching out makes Eleanor taller than earlier cars but no less aerodynamic. The team spent six months designing the body before fine-tuning it in Ford Motor Company's wind tunnel. The result is a super-slippery drag coefficient of 0.11, making Eleanor more aerodynamic than a Toyota Prius, the EV1 or even the super-slick Aptera 2e electric car.

Aerodynamic efficiency is paramount to extending battery range, especially when you're dealing with batteries charged by the sun. Eleanor features 580 silicon solar cells manufactured by Sun Power.

They cover six square meters (about 64.5 square feet) and generate 1,200 watts — enough to run a hair dryer or a pair of desktop computers. The juice is stored in a 6-kilowatt-hour Genasun battery pack comprising 693 lithium-ion cells. The battery weighs 32 kilograms (about 71 pounds) and provides sufficient range — even without sunlight — to get the car from Boston to New York. Propulsion comes from a 10-horsepower hub-mounted motor driving the lone rear wheel.

"A three-wheel vehicle simplifies suspension design," Hansel said. "It's also traditional."

Everything is packaged in a chrome-moly steel frame wrapped in carbon-fiber-and-Kevlar bodywork. The car weighs just under 500 pounds, and the top half of the body weighs just 40 pounds — with the solar cells.

Racing across Australia will require more than getting in, buckling up and mashing the accelerator pedal. There's a tremendous amount of strategy involved, with careful consideration of everything from road conditions and terrain to the weather forecast. Maximizing efficiency and range is the name of the game.

"You've got to go 2,000 miles, you've got specific hours you can drive and you've got a fixed amount of energy in the battery," said Spencer Quong, the Union of Concerned Scientists expert who is a member of the Team New England solar race team.

That's not to say Eleanor can't get up and go. She'll run all day at 55 mph, and although no one's put the pedal to the metal yet, Hansel says the math suggests Eleanor is capable of 90 mph.

Not that anyone will push her that hard. With their stiff suspensions and hollow bodies, solar race cars tend to resonate like drums at high speeds, creating a rumble that can be disconcerting in the driver's seat.

"Our previous car, Tesseract, was very fast. It was taken up to 85 mph before the driver got terrified," he said. "You reach the driver limit before you reach the motor limit."

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How would I go about laundering money?

I'm confident you're not contemplating anything illegal, Ben. However, it's helpful for us law-abiding folk to understand the workings of the criminal mind. So let's start at the beginning. Suppose you have a couple grocery bags full of ill-gotten cash. What do you do?

You sure as hell don't just spend it — Al Capone learned that the hard way when he was convicted of tax evasion. Modern bad guys understand that when large sums are involved, it's important to make the loot appear to have been legally acquired. Money laundering accomplishes this in three steps: (1) getting the money into the financial system, called "placing," (2) moving it around to hide the illegal taint, or "layering," and (3) commingling it with legitimate funds, known as "integrating."

Casinos used to make it easy to do this. In the 1970s, one organized crime figure went into an Atlantic City casino with nearly $1.2 million in small bills (authorities figured it must have filled a sizable duffel bag), gambled some of it away, then cashed in $800,000 in chips for $100 bills (these would fit comfortably in an attache case), and, some days later, dumped the money into a Swiss bank.

Trying this kind of stunt now would likely attract unwanted attention, as current federal law requires casinos and other operations handling large amounts of cash to report suspicious transactions. Instead, you might try an approach called "smurfing" — you break up your boodle into sums below the reporting threshold and arrange for proxies, or "smurfs," to deposit these into different checking accounts. In one infamous smurfing case a ring of middle-aged women placed over $25 million of Florida drug money into assorted California banks.

Another common approach is to mix up nonkosher funds with the assets of a front company: any above-ground business that handles a lot of cash, such as a check-cashing service, travel agency, grocery store, car wash, or coin laundry. Alternatively, you might use a business with a hard-to-value inventory — precious metals, jewelry, antiques, art, etc. Since law enforcement can't be sure how much money the business is supposed to have, the fake invoices or receipts you use to conceal your swag aren't conspicuous.

As a variation on the phony-invoicing trick, you can arrange to purchase property well below market value and slip the cash difference to the seller. You then resell a few months later at the true value, getting that cash back as a perfectly legal profit — any capital gains tax is just the cost of doing business. The cash you gave the original seller is his problem.

The stock market is another good place to wash money. You invest small amounts of cash in the market, several times a day, through different brokerage firms. Brokers don't routinely talk to each other, so multiple accounts with different firms won't attract suspicion. If you use your front company to buy the stock, there's yet another level of complexity for the investigators to try to unwind.

Once the money's in a bank, you want to further obscure the trail. Wire the cash to an offshore account somewhere with no tax on business or investment income and strict secrecy laws — the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands, Bermuda, Luxembourg, etc. Then your U.S. front company can take a "loan" from your Cayman Islands bank account. If the FBI asks where you got the million dollars, you tell them truthfully it's a bank loan, and you've got legal loan documentation to prove it. The money isn't taxable (it's a loan); when you repay the interest, you pay it to yourself and deduct it as a business expense while shipping even more money out of the country.

So let's imagine a typical money-laundering scenario: (1) Make numerous below-the-radar deposits to accounts in different banks. (2) Consolidate the funds via wire transfer in a single account in, say, Tampa. (3) Wire that to a London bank. (4) Convert the funds to certificates of deposit. (5) Use those as collateral for a loan from a bank in the Cayman Islands. (6) Transfer the loan proceeds back to your front company in Tampa. Result: a confusing trail for the feds to follow, most of it electronic, with no need for small unmarked bills or other crime-fiction cliches.

In short, money laundering has become a species of high finance. Some claim it's the third largest business in the world, behind legitimate currency transactions and the auto industry. It conceals some nasty enterprises — criminal-finance experts estimate that more than two thirds of U.S. money-laundering prosecutions involve illegal drug dealing, and terrorists shuffle their share of cash as well. Then again, knowing what we do about many legal global transactions of late, you'd have to say it's not just the criminals in the financial marketplace who are up to no good.

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The 1971 Plymouth Duster is a somewhat unusual candidate for an electric motor conversion. In fact, other than an '83 Delorian, I have not encountered what I consider to be a cool street car converted to electric power. Most people seem to be converting the lightest, ugliest and cheapest vehicles they can obtain. In fact, I sense that the choice of that type of vehicle is even part of the sub-culture of "conversionists". I have felt an attitude of slight disapproval when discussing this project on a couple of EV forums. It doesn't meet the sub-culture's idea of a practical conversion.

I guess if cheap practically were my only consideration I'd have to go with the usual beat-up silver or white 4 door foreign piece of crap that is popular with the people that have already done conversions. But, I'm just not that kind of guy. I'd almost rather keep buying gasoline - or walk - than to have to drive something like that to go electric.

I believe that the Duster possesses several advantages for conversion. First, it is a solid, road-worthy, working automobile that needs nothing. Stripped of its engine, exhaust, radiator and other no longer relevant parts, it is actually a fairly light roller. Oh yeah, the sub-culture calls them "gliders". My glider is quite large compared to most. That means plenty room for batteries, controllers and chargers, etc. It does not contain a computer or sensitive electronics to contend with as newer vehicles do. It was built without power "anything", which is good. The non power brakes were built to stop much heavier cars than a Duster. Also, the previous owner of my car installed super stock leaf springs in the rear. As far as I can tell, that car could easily support 10 head of cattle in the trunk - and there is room for them! Lastly, an advantage to me is that I have worked on several of these cars. I know every square inch of it. There is no learning curve with the car itself. Yes, there will be challenges and required modifications, but I expect the results will be quite satisfactory.

Build log ongoing at...
Electricmopar.blogspot.com

When I was at the Green Summit a couple weeks ago I saw some vendors demonstrating pervious concrete which is porous concrete that water can flow through to the ground. Turns out this is quite a useful characteristic for some applications where traditional non-pervious concrete is usually used such as parking lots, drive ways, and paths. It reduces the heat island effect, helps recharge aquifers, saves space, and reduces toxic runoff.

Probably one of the greatest benefits of this is that it reduces the heat island effect. Concrete already reflects more heat than asphalt because of its light color, but pervious concrete goes a step further. Since it is porous it allows moisture from below to evaporate which acts to cool the concrete. One of the vendors also said that since it has less thermal mass it doesn’t absorb as much heat.

Another benefit is that pervious concrete can help recharge aquifers. Instead of rainwater being diverted into storm drains or water retention basins the water goes straight down to the ground. This helps recharge aquifers and water trees and plants around the area of the lots. Trees around lots with pervious concrete have been shown to live longer and grow wider.

Effective use of land is an issue in cities and since water flows through pervious concrete in many cases the need for retention basins to collect rainwater is reduced or completely eliminated. This is a huge benefit in places where space is at a premium.

Permeable concreate produces no toxic runoff. Most asphalt lots are sealed with coal-tar based sealants, which is the black coating you often see and smell used on streets and parking lots. Run off from coal-tar sealed parking lots have been found to have 65% more polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) than unsealed lots. PAHs are one of the most widespread organic pollutants and have been found to be probable human carcinogens. PAHs have been long associated with causing lung cancer in roofers and asphalt workers according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Science. Large concentrations of PAHs can also kill aquatic life. I’m not sure how true this is, but the vendors claim that when automobile fluids are washed down under parking lots that they are filtered out and transformed by microorganisims into inert materials before they reach aquifers.

If you are looking to build a pathway, drive way, or parking lots pervious concrete might just be the perfect alternative to traditional concrete. Vendors are popping up all over the country and here in Phoenix Progressive Concrete Works is probably one of the best known. They’ve done some large installations such as ASU’s Art Museum parking lot...(2:45)

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Ex-suspects want police to pay for dead marijuana plants

After the case against the Colorado couple fell apart, they were given back their seized property -- which had gone unmaintained in a police evidence room.

DENVER -- When the Fort Collins police arrested James and Lisa Masters and carted away their 39 marijuana plants, they put the plants where they normally put confiscated property involved in alleged crimes: the evidence room.

And there they sat, without a grow lamp, water or pruning.

A year later, the case against the Masterses -- who claimed they used the drug for medical purposes -- fell apart, and a judge ordered the police to return their property.

"All the plants were dead," said Brian Vicente, one of the attorneys for the couple. "Some had turned to liquid -- this black, moldy liquid. There was mold over everything."

Incensed, the couple asked the Police Department to reimburse them $200,000 for the destroyed plants. City officials refused, and the Masterses are now considering a lawsuit to compel the northern Colorado city to compensate them.

Of the 12 states that have legalized marijuana for medical use, Colorado stands out for its law specifying that police must not "harm, neglect or destroy" seized plants in such cases, said Noah Mamber, legal services coordinator for Americans for Safe Access, an advocacy group.

But in the eight years since voters approved the law, no law enforcement agency has had to grapple with that aspect of it, said attorneys familiar with medical marijuana cases.

"There's not a whole lot of case law on this, frankly," Vicente said.

Many situations are resolved without police seizing the plants because it becomes apparent to police that the suspect is authorized to have marijuana, said Rob Corry, another attorney for the Masterses.

In other states, police often destroy the plants during or after an arrest. But that may be changing, Mamber said. He cited a recent case in Burlingame, Calif., where police found a number of marijuana plants and confiscated them until they could find the owner and ascertain whether he was a medical marijuana user. He was.

Police in that case kept the plants less than a week. They didn't water or tend them during that time, Burlingame Police Capt. Mike Matteucci said, adding that the department is not equipped to serve as a nursery.

The outcome of the Colorado case, he said, could help define law enforcement's responsibilities in such matters. "It's uncharted waters here," Matteucci said.

In 2006, James Masters and his wife, Lisa, were arrested on suspicion of felony cultivation and intent to distribute. At the time, they were growing marijuana for themselves and for at least five other people with medical problems, their attorneys said. Lisa Masters, 33, has fibromyalgia and tendinitis; her husband, 31, suffers from chronic nausea and pain from knee and hip problems, Corry said.

Both had doctors' recommendations that they ingest marijuana for their medical issues, but they had not joined the state's registry, Vicente said, because they could not afford the $110 fee.

Those in the registry may possess up to 2 ounces of marijuana and as many as six plants, and caregivers may keep up to six plants for each person in their care. Because the Masterses were also serving as caregivers, Vicente said, they were allowed to have the 39 plants.

Because the Masterses weren't listed in the registry, police treated the plants as they would evidence in any other drug case, said Fort Collins police spokeswoman Rita Davis.

"At the time they were confiscated, they didn't have documents to prove it was medical marijuana. They have to have some proof," Davis said.

The Masterses' attorneys maintain that the law doesn't require people to produce documentation when claiming the marijuana is medicinal.

The law says that property should not be neglected or destroyed in cases "where such property has been seized in connection with the claimed medical use of marijuana." It does not specify a criminal penalty when the law is not followed.

In any event, Corry said, the Masterses did provide paperwork showing their doctors' recommendations that they use marijuana.

A judge eventually dismissed the charges, ruling that the police search had been illegal. Until then, the Masterses, who have since joined the state registry, continued to use marijuana provided to them by others, Vicente said. He argued that police should care for the plants they take just as they would an animal or child removed from a home.

"If the police take your pit bull, do they put it in an evidence locker for two months or do they take care of it?" Vicente said. "We plan on holding the police accountable. We're talking about people's medicine here."

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How to open a Swiss bank account

To most people a Swiss Bank account is something for the super rich, crooks, dishonest government officials or just a good way to hide assets. They’re the stuff of thrillers like The Bourne Identity or James Bond.

The allure of Swiss banking comes from Switzerland’s stable currency–and the country’s much vaunted bank secrecy laws.

The Swiss have some of the tightest regulations in the entire world as far as who can gain access to your account. Swiss bank secrecy has protected funds deposited in Swiss banks for over 300 years. The Swiss were bankers to the kings of France; Louis XVI even had a Swiss banker, Jacques Necker, as director general of French finances. Until 1934, bank secrecy was covered by various provisions in the Swiss civil code. The courts fixed bank secrecy firmly in actual practice, so that a client who fell victim to violation of bank secrecy could henceforth obtain damages from the bank.

In 1934, the Swiss passed a law that made it a criminal offense for bankers to reveal the identity of account holders. There are two reasons why this protection was reinforced:

1. Nazi spies: The 1931 crisis led to intensified foreign exchange control in Germany. Hitler promulgated a law whereby any German with foreign capital was to be punished by death, and the Gestapo began espionage on Swiss banks. When three Germans were put to death, the Swiss government was convinced of the necessity to reinforce bank secrecy.
2. Pressure from the French: The 1932 Basler Handelsbank affair revealed that over 2,000 members of the French elite had accounts in Switzerland. French Leftists took advantage of this to denounce the austerity program of the government. It called for legal authority over French accounts in Switzerland, but to no avail.

Unlike American law where law enforcement agencies, the judicial system, and private citizens can gain access to all kinds of financial information, under Swiss law neither the bank’s officers or the its employees are allowed to reveal any information, relative to any account to anyone, including the Swiss government.

No private citizen, or their legal representative can ever receive any type of information about anyone’s Swiss bank account under any set of conditions. That includes all types of legal proceedings that the Swiss classify as non-criminal behavior.

The Swiss consider tax evasion a political offense. Divorce, inheritance disputes and bankruptcy cases are considered private matters, and as such the secrecy of the account is protected from any legal action to verify the presence of, or attempts to seize any assets.

There are some notable exceptions. The Swiss are bound by a treaty with the US to reveal accounts connected with organized crime, drug trafficking and insider trading. But the final say on revealing the identity of the account holder is up to the Swiss authorities. There are no US restrictions on having Swiss bank accounts, but the IRS requires you to report your foreign accounts when you file your annual income tax return. Interest earned in a foreign account is still taxable under US tax laws, but you usually get to offset foreign taxes that you may be required to pay.

There are Swiss bank accounts and there are Swiss bank accounts. The first is accessible to (almost) anyone. Such an account will offer credit and debit cards, checking or whatever else you may want in a bank account. Opening such an account can be done in person–some Swiss banks have branches here in the US–or by mail. Some red tape is involved in that you have to get a signature from someone at a Swiss consulate, but not much more is required.

Then there are the Swiss bank accounts you’ve heard about from the movies, which–surprise, surprise–aren’t always accurate. These are the numbered accounts, the ones with minimum balances anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million. It’s known as private banking and it’s reserved for folks who have a lot of assets to manage and who demand a lot of service. Many private banks require a special invitation or referral by current customers. The services you receive at a private bank focus on private counseling in aspects of wealth management including investments, tax concerns, and estate planning.

The numbered accounts aren’t anonymous, but only a few people know the name of the account holder and Swiss law forbids them from revealing it to most anyone. They can’t acknowledge that you have an account, give out the name of a numbered account holder or reveal any information about the transactions of any account holder.

Generally, numbered accounts must be opened in person, though lawyers and/or brokers can perform this service for you by mail. You’ll have to fill out a mountain of paperwork and provide details about your life and job as well as a letter of introduction from a US banker. Your signature and identity have to be authenticated by a notary public or consul, depending on circumstances.

If you’ve got the money and want to open such account, here are links to the private banking departments of some well known Swiss banks:
# Credit Suisse
# UBS, The Union Bank of Switzerland
# Bank Vontobel AG
# Rothschild Bank AG
# EFG International
# Mirbaud et Cie

Switzerland isn’t the only place to put your assets. Banks in Anguilla, Belize, Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Panama offer similar services.

Cause you just never know...

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Jim Denevan makes freehand drawings in sand. At low tide on wide beaches Jim searches the shore for a wave tossed stick. After finding a good stick and composing himself in the near and far environment Jim draws-- laboring up to 7 hours and walking as many as 30 miles. The resulting sand drawing is made entirely freehand w/ no measuring aids whatsoever. From the ground, these drawn environments are experienced as places. Places to explore and be, and to see relation and distance. For a time these tangible specific places exist in the indeterminate environment of ocean shore. From high above the marks are seen as isolated phenomena, much like clouds, rivers or buildings. Soon after Jim's motions and marks are completed water moves over and through, leaving nothing.

Site

So, Motor Trend recently got to drive a Tesla Roadster....

An excerpt....

I check the mirrors again. Still no traffic. I'm almost grimacing as I release the brake and pound the accelerator to the floor. Whrrrrrrr...30 mph, 40 mph, 50...in the four seconds it's taken to read this sentence, the Roadster has shrieked to 60 mph (Tesla's claimed 3.9 seconds would seem entirely plausible in a controlled setting). There's no wheelspin, axle tramp, shutter, jutter, smoke whiff, cowl shake, nothing. I'm being eerily teleported down the barrel of a rail gun, head pulled back by a hard, steady acceleration. Bizarre. And before too long, profoundly humbling to just about any rumbling Ferrari or Porsche that makes the mistake of pulling up next to a silent, 105-mpg Tesla Roadster at a stoplight.

Click here for the eerily silent video. (there's a short commercial pre-vid)

2008 Tesla Roadster
Base Price $98,950

Vehicle Layout..... Mid-motor, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door roadster

Motor..... AC synchronous, 248-hp/211-lb-ft

Transmission..... 2-speed manual

Curb Weight..... 2690 lb

Wheelbase..... 92.6 in

Length x Width x Height..... 155.4 x 67.8 x 44.4 in

0-60 mph..... 4.0 sec

Fuel Economy..... 105 mpg gas equivalent

Range, Combined..... 220 miles

Recharge Time..... 3.5 hrs @ 220 volts/70 amps

On Sale In U.S...... Currently/delivery in 2008


Tesla Motors

Bringing Wind Power Down To Earth

There’s been a lot of energy behind wind power these days, with talk of larger and more dramatic installations every week. But this may leave you wondering, what does it have to do with me? Would I ever want one of these giant towers in my backyard or on my business? Noble though the idea is, for many, this is not an appealing or feasible option, due to space limitations or code restrictions. But then you may wonder, would a micro turbine make a notable dent in my energy needs?

Last week while at the Green California Summit, I saw a beautiful and practical solution to this: Helix Wind. With its elegant, rippled white shape, and the ability to work with any wind greater then 4.5 mph, requiring only 14 feet in height, these turbines bring it all home, literally.

How much power do they bring? 1KW for personal, 2KW for businesses, enough to meet as much as half your energy needs. There’s no need to have a battery to store the power generated as in solar panels, as “net metering,” or power metering that accounts for energy put back into the grid as well as what’s used, can be used as credit towards your energy costs.

There are many micro turbines out there, but none has the unique undulating helix form of this. So? Beyond being aesthetically interesting, this enables it to catch air from any direction, more efficiently, with less needed. The unique shape apparently is also, they claim, completely safe for birds - one of the stumbling blocks to greater implementation of such devices. Silencing other critics is the fact that it’s, well, silent in operation.

In action....(2:30)