Electricity, Light, and Sound Workshop

In December, I presented a workshop introducing the concept of electrical energy to several groups of students in grades 4-7. The workshop was based around using a hand crank generator to power various electrical circuits. Here is the workshop document that I followed in both word and pdf  form.

Someone leading this workshop would require a bit of knowledge with electrical and electronic circuits as well as access to basic electronic components such as breadboards, wire, resistors, and LEDs, and some not as basic components such as supercapacitors and hand crank generator. The hand crank generators that I used are former flashlights from which I removed the LEDs and batteries.

IMG 6766 300x182 Electricity, Light, and Sound Workshop

Capacitor and LED Circuit

Kelowna Municipal Election

Kelowna is having a municipal election on November 19th. If you are interested in the candidate’s opinions on sustainability or energy, you might want to check out http://qualityoflifekelowna.com .  The questions asked related to this are:

“What can the city do to adopt and encourage the adoption of renewable energy technologies? Do you think the city should make net-metering and time-of-use metering available to all its electricity customers? “

Will you help by rating their responses? Simply visit the website and rate the candidate’s answers using the star rating system. The top-rated candidates (as decided by you!) will form the “Quality of Life List” of candidates.
Then please don’t forget to visit the polls on November 19th. Your vote means a lot, and our city’s future is at stake. More election info: www.kelowna.ca
kelowna apples Kelowna Municipal Election
Image Source: RandyA38 (on flickr)

Registering an Electric Vehicle Conversion

A recent post from the MapAWatt blog discusses the process for registering a vehicle in Georgia that has recently been converted to electric.  It is a three step process with the inspection being the one fairly complicated and in depth step.  The whole process can also take several weeks because you have to wait for your inspection certificate to be mailed to you.  This was a timely post because last Sunday, two days before the MapAWatt blog post came out, I visited Dave Ward of Dave Ward’s Auto Electric at an EV car exhibit.  The car exhibit (which was mostly just Dave showing off his converted Sonoma pick-up truck and answering questions about electric vehicles) was part of the ever popular Okanagan Greens festival here in Kelowna, BC.  I had some questions for Dave because I am interested in converting a vehicle to electric (hopefully sometime in the near future).  One question I had for him was exactly what was covered in the MapAWatt post: “What is the registration process for a new EV?”  It turns out that there is almost no process at all.  As long as your vehicle was registered and road worthy before the conversion all it takes to re-register it is to change the fuel type on the ICBC form from gas to electric, pay your licensing and insurance fees, and you are done.

EV UnderTheHood Registering an Electric Vehicle Conversion

Source: Seuss. - http://www.flickr.com/photos/90124154@N00/3031904683/

With regards to my own vehicle conversion, I am currently in the “convince my family it’s a good idea” stage, but hopefully we’ll be out of that stage and into the planning stage soon.  I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.