February 2, 2010 By dale
Filed under: Energy
Six months of behind the scenes work came to fruition two weekends ago when our gas systems (for customer registration and billing and so on) went live.
Our first ‘Green Gas’ customers are with us now. Me included I’m pleased to say.
While we shake things down we’re limiting the sign up rate to a few hundred a week. If you want to get in the queue to be among the first you can do that here.
The response from Ecotricity customers and non customers, to this idea, has been fantastic.
The response from British Gas has been something else. Odd to say the least. Continue reading “We are not British Gas”
January 29, 2010 By dale
Filed under: Energy
Earlier this week EDF (that big Olympic sponsor, and green flag waver……. 
) announced (it appears), through the Evening Standard, that they’ve decided to walk away from a Wind turbine project to power the Olympic games in 2012.
To most people that may have been interesting but not such a big deal. To anybody close to this issue it’s something altogether different.
The article runs under the headline:
Energy firm EDF abandons 2012 Olympics turbine due to ‘lack of wind’
The article doesn’t quote EDF directly but it confidently says:
“French-owned EDF Energy are not bidding to run the 393ft-tall turbine on the Games site as they were concerned about a lack of wind.
The company, London’s largest electricity supplier, said it would not be able to sell enough wind energy from the 2012 Olympic site into the national grid in future years to justify the turbine’s £2 million start-up costs.
This is an Olympic sized ‘Pork Pie’. Continue reading “Olympic sized Pork Pies anyone?”
January 26, 2010 By dale
Filed under: Transport, Wind Car
Here’s the latest. We’ve almost finished making a new lightweight rear body panel for the car. The old one was very heavy and floppy, so our guys whipped up a new one in carbon fibre. It’ll actually help us with the fitting of the charging equipment by saving the need for engineering up a bunch of structural support – for a panel that’s already too heavy.
We get a slick new carbon body, save a lot of weight (where we don’t want weight – the rear) and make the charging kit an easy install. Neat solution.
We’ve also got a new diffuser coming out of the moulds. This is the bit that sits under the rear of the car. It’s being engineered with some nifty flaps to the left and right that pull down to expose the two charging options:
Normal (13A and slow) or Abnormal (100A and fast).
With some changes to the rear lights and to the internals viewed through the rear window thrown in – this part of the car is going to be pretty slick. Continue reading “Nemesis update – nearly there.”
November 23, 2009 By paul
Filed under: Energy
Hiya all,
Just a quick heads-up – Dale is just about to take part in this week’s Guardian Environment ‘You ask, they answer’ Q&A session – could be interesting… If any of you fancy chipping in your 2 penneth, dive on in – the water’s lovely!
EDITED TO ADD: The Q&A session is now closed now but it’s still worth reading.
November 21, 2009 By dale
Filed under: Energy
The ‘how green is it to supply gas’ debate kicked off here last week, in response to some questions we asked of our customers. Actually we had over 1400 responses and overwhelming support in principle. And a lively debate followed, it even had our friends at Treehugger joining in…
I couldn’t say much last week except we had something I thought was pretty exciting to unveil in a few days time. Well here it is now.
Today we’re launching Green Gas. Continue reading “‘Green Gas’ is here”
November 17, 2009 By dale
Filed under: Transport, Wind Car
A quick update on the car front.
I had my first breakdown the other week. I went to drive away in the morning and everything was just dead. Turned out the 12v battery we use to power the control side had gone flat, and oddly enough a couple of fuses were blown. As you can see from the picture, I got the youngest member of the team on the job, with my own personal favourite ’spanner’….
And when we’d finished fooling around we called Bob and he came down and fixed it. No big drama but some useful ‘operational experience’.
Actually things have kind of ground to a halt on the Nemesis. It’s been with me since August, for what was meant to be a months worth of road testing while the Battery Management System (BMS) was finished. Three months later I’ve still got the car and we’ve not got a BMS yet. Which is disappointing to say the least. Everything else about the project has gone incredibly well, but for this – and it’s held us up for over six months now. It’s a frustration for all of us, not just me.
The car goes – it goes like hell, it’s just not ‘plug and play’ – by which I mean I can’t just plug it in to charge it. It takes a laptop and some close attention and we’re not able to charge to the full potential of the cells (for safety). So it’s “close but no cigar”. Continue reading “Nemesis Update”
October 28, 2009 By paul
Filed under: Energy
You may have heard in the news (In the Guardian, Business Green, Campaign, Brand Republic) that the ASA have recently decided not to uphold the 149 complaints against EDF and their Green Britain campaign.
The ASA said:
” ..we considered that consumers were unlikely to infer from the ads that EDF was a ‘green’ company, we concluded that the ads were unlikely to mislead.”
“..we considered that consumers were unlikely to infer that EDF Energy was a British company. We therefore concluded that the ads were unlikely to mislead.”
EDF had this to say:
“EDF Energy welcomes the decision by the Advertising Standards Authority regarding our Green Britain Day and Team Green Britain advertising, in which neither challenge has been upheld by the authority… We are committed to leading the energy change to bring about a low carbon future and we have led the way among energy companies in making long-term commitments to the environment and to sustainability… EDF Energy is the UK’s largest generator of low carbon electricity.”
Dale had this to say in response: Continue reading “Nobody in their right minds would think EDF is Green or British – according to the ASA”
October 15, 2009 By dale
Filed under: Energy
I’ve spent some time in the last few weeks thinking about Copenhagen, should I go? What could I do there? Drive the Nemesis there maybe….
There’s lots of campaigns focussed on it right now, lots of people trying to show politicians that this is what we all want. And I hope they succeed, I think they probably already have actually. Copenhagen is all over the news and it’s clear that there’s real public pressure for a deal. That’s about the best a campaign can hope for. Now it’s up to the delegates. At least this time the US isn’t being led by an oil man/half wit.
I went to the UN conference in Kyoto, the one that put climate change on the map. A friend of mine got hold of some passes and we just turned up with no idea what to expect. Our plan was to talk anyone that would listen about the role that wind energy has to play in fighting climate change. The message went down well. Continue reading “Copenhagen here we come (well not me)”
October 2, 2009 By paul
Filed under: Transport, Wind Car
A little while ago, Dale had the pleasure of being picked up and driven around by Robert Llewellyn for his very entertaining and simple yet clever online CarPool show. Here’s the video as published today – hope you enjoy.
September 4, 2009 By paul
Filed under: Energy, Transport, Wind Car
Hiya Folks,
Paul here (back off my hols).
A couple of event announcements for our UK based readers. Firstly – I thought you might like to know about a public appearance of the Nemesis Wind Powered Car happening on the 12th/13th September at the Science Museum in Wroughton, Near Swindon in Wiltshire. It will be part of the family oriented Festival of Innovation. I am hoping to be there with my family on the 12th – so might see you there? It is a free event (although high carbon producing transport will be charged £5 to park).
Here’s the event page for the Festival of Innovation on Facebook.
Also – Ecotricity are hosting a kite festival to celebrate the power of the wind on the 13th September 2009.
Help us to fill the sky with kites and celebrate the power of the wind at Thistledown Environment Centre, near Nailsworth (Stroud).
- Free Admission
- 500 kites to give away (or fly your own)
- Explore 70 acres of natural environment and wildlife
- Free soft drinks courtesy of bottlegreen
- Professional kite demonstration
I also created a Facebook event page for the 500Kites event too.
Take it easy, and we hope to see you at one or both
Paul
Six months of behind the scenes work came to fruition two weekends ago when our gas systems (for customer registration and billing and so on) went live.
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