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Thursday, May 01, 2008
Wildlife West Is Hosting Wind and Solar Fair
By Lee Ross /
Mountain View Telegraph
Wildlife West Nature Park is hosting an event of elemental proportions.
Two big players at this year's Wind Festival and Green Energy Fair are the wind, of course, and the sun.
Previously known as the Wind Festival, the park has held a yearly celebration of the wind for around seven years, according to Roger Alink, the park's executive director. “The reason we called it the Wind Festival in the first place,” he said, “the intent was to create an energy fair.”
Alink said there might be electricity-generating wind turbines this year. He said there will be solar ovens, a solar water heater, solar-powered race cars and full-sized hybrid cars.
“There are no cars there yet that will run on air pollution,” Alink joked. “We need a car that runs on air pollution.”
He conceded that, in Edgewood, a wind-powered car might work better.
Tim Vaughn will be giving out information on what he says is a much older form of renewable energy, solar power.
“Solar is nothing new,” he said. “We see it as all this newfangled technology … Solar thermal (energy) was used by the Romans.”
Vaughn, who has lived in the East Mountains for two years, sells solar panels that produce electricity for Power Up, a company that manufactures photovoltaic components.
Having worked in the solar energy field for the past 20 years, Vaughn said what first interested him in photovoltaic power was the idea of “free electricity from sunlight.”
On the subject of free benefits, he said one of the main things he hopes to explain to people at the festival is not how the panels work, but how federal and state rebates work. And they may be even more complicated.
“Gosh, the way it is written,” he said, “you almost need to be an attorney to understand what they're talking about.”
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