Greetings on National Earth Day, April 22, 2005

 I would like to thank everyone that came out to Baton Rouge Earth Day this past Sunday and had a chance to stop by the Louisiana Solar Energy Society’s booth.  We had several members manning the booth (Jeremy Branton, Meredith Buckner, and me) and it was “hopping” the whole time.  We must have talked to 500 people a piece about solar.  We had an 85 watt Shell Solar panel and a flexible 5 watt UniSolar panel (donated by Louisiana Homepower) powering a computer and a garden fountain.  Also out for hands-on use was a Solar Pathfinder instrument (used to determine best panel location).  There were lots of good questions that we were happy to answer about solar.  Live bands played from noon till 8:00 that night and the street venders all had great food. 

 New Orleans celebrated their Earth Day on Friday and I was able to make it to the activities at The Green Project, their urban recycling center.  GP started in 1996 as a Saturday paint exchange program and have expanded to a full blown recycling center for building materials and the arts.  They are becoming a recycling educational center among other things.  They are even starting a biodiesel program so that their truck can be environmentally friendly.  In an effort to make their facility more environmentally friendly as well as reduce their monthly operating costs they installed a 6.0 kilowatt grid-tied solar power system on their roof.  It provides about 20% of their current power needs and with their next wave of energy efficiency projects it will cover even more.

 The Green Project chose Earth day for the official dedication of the system and invited all the media to cover the “plugging in” of the system on the rooftop.  This is a big event for our solar community as this is the largest grid-tied system installed in Louisiana to date.  If you would like more details or photos on the system you can go to http://lahomepower.com/green 

Our next major event scheduled is the National Solar Tour which will be on Saturday, October 1, 2005.  More details will follow but make sure to mark the date.