Rhode Island Avenue is in the process of being resurfaced from North Capital to 30th St NE. In an amazing feat of accountancy, the project’s costs are known down to the penny…
Federal Highway Trust Funds: $1,495,597.23
District of Columbia: $303,076.53
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Posted by solarkismet
We live in Mount Rainier, Maryland, that town you’ve never heard of that is not a mountain and is right next to DC. When we go to visit friends in Fairlington, we pass some curious sights and good food on the way…road trip!
1. Rita’s Ice Cones - Rhode Island and South Dakota
You can get soft serve ice cream, but why? Instead, go for the gelati. Tonight I had custard with pina colada and wild black cherry flavored shaved ice on top of more custard. Incredible. The choice for DC and Prince George’s County ambulances - five stopped by in the hour we were there.
2. Road Funds Sign - Rhode Island and 13th St NE
Rhode Island Avenue is in the process of being resurfaced from North Capital to 30th St NE. Love the construction. But in an amazing feat of accountancy, the project’s costs are known down to the penny…$1,495,597.23 for the Feds and $303,076.53 for DC.
3. Etete Ethiopian Restaurant - 1942 9th St NW
As you continue down Rhode Island, you might get hungry and swing off near the Shaw Howard University metro station to Etete Ethiopian near U-Street. Amazingly good Ethiopian that feels less commercialized than Dukem (it’s half-house, half restaurant after all). Plus, if you’re lucky, they’ll fire up the projector and play African music videos with pelvis thrusting women for your fine dining pleasure (even if you’re the only ones there)…
4. I-395 Speed Camera Slow-Down - south of the New York Avenue entrance
There is a speed camera just after the tunnel on I-395 at New York Avenue. Everyone local knows it and the speed limit is 45 mph. But everyone slows down to 35 mph. Why????
(Picture TBD)
5. Guy Camping on I-395 - under 7th Street SW
So you’re finally getting somewhere and are set to head over to Alexandria. But wait, there’s a guy camping, complete with a tent, BBQ, and lawn chairs in the grassy median underneath the 7th St NW overpass between the east and westbound I-395 traffic. He’s been there for at least a month, hanging out in broad daylight. The Washington City Paper did a story on him last week, “Median Man.”
6. Idiots Crossing Five Lanes of Traffic - Jefferson Davis Hwy exit
You’ve crossed the river and are in Virginia! Congratulations. But here’s an SUV going 25 mph, trying to cross five lanes of traffic after gawking at the Pentagon and throwing the bird because you didn’t let him in…Have a nice day.
(Picture TBD)
7. All These Condos Looks the Same - Fairlington
You’ve finally made it to Arlington, home of your friends. But every single one of these condos looks the same and now you’re lost…
No Comments » | Amusing, Food, Mount Rainier (MD), Travel, Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
So you’ve decided to move to Mount Rainier, Maryland?
Congratulations on finding the best, undiscovered city outside of Washington D.C. Housing prices are reasonable (for DC), there’s a metro within walking distance (17 minutes to Chinatown), it’s a friendly walkable neighborhood where you get to know your neighbors, and there’s no real mountain. Takoma Park at half the price and twice the diversity…
This guide should help you in finding your way (and if anyone has suggestions, make a comment below and I’ll incorporate it)…
Statistics
Even with all the single family homes, apparently Mount Rainier has the highest population density in Maryland, over 12,000 people per square mile (of course the total area is only 0.65 square miles).
Basics
Community
Outside
Other Links
Want to live here? Find a home in Mount Rainier.
2 Comments | Arts, Music, Culture, Food, Money, Mount Rainier (MD), Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
[Update 1/8/08: Helio Micro is now moving into the residential PPA market, creating a third residential PPA style company. Their website is more murky than Sun Run (below), so you can't evaluate much of anything (which always causes me pause), but they just hired a finance director from SunPower (Solarbuzz article). To my knowledge, none of the three has installed a system under this model...yet. Remember: hype (!) = cover-up. This will happen in California first and then trickle elsewhere - don't hold your breath. NJ just voted to provide rebates to everyone on the waiting list, but not anyone new as they transition to a market incentive, which is good in the long run, but creates market uncertainty now (article). So their market attractiveness to this model is on hold.]
According to a news release on Renewable Energy Access, CitizenRE now has a competitor in the residential solar-leasing services industry (of which there are no documented installations as of yet). It isn’t FREE! but I predict they’ll beat CitizenRE to the punch in having actual solar installations…
Borrego Solar, a solar installer since 1980, has a partnership with Sun Run LLC and is now offering a similar solar-leasing product to CitizenRE, but they have a bit of realism embedded in their business plan. It is currently only available in Contra Costa County, California on a pilot basis (not EVERYWHERE for ANYONE!).
Essentially, they install a solar system on your home and if it offsets your electric bill 50%, you pay 50% to your electric company at their prices and 50% to Sun Run at their prices, which are either fixed or declining.
Sun Run’s website has some information about the process on their website (no contracts or clear costs persay) and there are two options:
1. Higher downpayment with a fixed 20 year solar rate
2. Lower downpayment with a higher but declining solar rate
The solar rate they give in their example, shows the higher down payment of just over $16,185 (not FREE!) and a solar rate of 13.5 cents/kilowatt-hour, which seems expensive but California has high rates (actually, even in Maryland, I pay 15 cents/kWh). It should be noted that the $16K down payment is still $20K less than buying it yourself, based on their math.
Before solar, this example home pays 26 cents/kWh to the electric company, and after, they pay 17 cents/kWh to the electric company (since they’re now in a lower rate tier with solar because they are consuming less) and 13.5 cents/kWh to SunRun at a 20-year fixed rate.
If electric rates never rose, you would break even on this investment over 20 years if you used over 23,000 kWh/yr, not counting the cost of money (that’s a lot - I use 3600 kWh in DC). So, you are really banking on electric rates rising to recoup your up-front investment on a quicker basis, and using a lot of electricity (but cut your electric bills first!).
The second option doesn’t have an example on their website, but would be something like paying $8,000 up front and your solar rate being 18 cents/kWh in year 1, and declining to 13 cents/kWh in year 20, when conventional electricity prices are presumably much higher. Ultimately, the economics are probably the same for either option for the company but gives the homeowner the option to make a choice on the amount up-front.
On it’s face, this sounds like a much more reasonable alternative to CitizenRE:
There are only a few places where some combination of electric rates, amount of sun, and solar incentives make this possible - California, New Jersey (when they aren’t running out of incentive money), maybe Arizona, Nevada, or New Mexico. Hawaii has sun and rates but not incentives. The East Coast has high rates, some programs, but less sun. Colorado’s sunny and has incentives, but the rates are a bit too low (and they may run out of $/motivation soon if they aren’t careful by growing too fast).
Like with all things, if it sounds like a silver bullet, things are almost always more complicated than they seem. I know nothing about either of these new companies, but on their face, the programs have a measure of realism to them that CitizenRE never had (note past tense).
As has been pointed out in the past, this is only “new” because it’s being done on homes, which are higher cost per amount of solar installed. Large business no-cost solar systems are a common part of the solar industry in California and New Jersey already.
This provides an interesting reference for how much CitizenRE would have to further reduce costs to get to their goal of a $500 down payment and solar across the country. Just to operate in California, they’ll have to deal with the over $15,000 they’re not getting from the customer, and in other states, the lower electric rates and solar resource. My original 3 part series on CitizenRE can be read here - “Not All That’s Renewable Is Green - Part 1 of 3″.
4 Comments | Energy, Environment, Money, Renewable Energy, Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
5 Comments | Amusing, Environment, Hypocrisy, Religion, Science, Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
Is James Blunt, singer songwriter and celebrity babe magnet, masquerading as Jon Heder, Napoleon Dynamite and Mormon Figure Skater? You be the judge.
No Comments » | Amusing, Arts, Music, Culture, Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
In my continuous quest to show my WAFC Intermediate Summer League Regular Season (12-1) and Tournament (6-0) Champion Ultimate Frisbee team that I know everything about long-held sports and health scientific myths, I hereby present the fact that lactic acid does not build up in your muscles and cause soreness. It’s a myth. I know it’s crazy - just like the “Stretching Prevents Injury” myth from last week.
There is no lactic acid threshold you need to stay under. It doesn’t build up. It’s “one of the classic mistakes in the history of science.” Says who? Those darn scientists.
“Lactic Acid is Not Muscles’ Foe, It’s Fuel” (NYTimes)
It’s a classic story of a scientist having an idea that something was wrong and being persistent until others began to test the same thing and back him up. But how do you tell if a scientists is a crackpot or a diamond in the rough? At first you can’t. But if what they say is replicable and can be reproduced by others independently, you’ve got something.
In part, this is why creationists are full of it - there’s no logic or testing involved in their theory…no actual science. Because in order for something to be scientific, you actually have to test it. Otherwise, it’s putting the answer you know ahead of the testing you’re going to do. In the Creationists’ case, it’s proving that the world’s longest game of written “telephone,” i.e. the Bible, is true.
And while we’re on the topic, has anyone tried to do a volumetric study of Noah’s ark and all of the world’s animals? Could you even fit them all in there, much less keep them alive for 40 days? I kind of doubt it.
5 Comments | Religion, Science, Sports, Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
Those darn Europeans! They’ve gone and created melodramatic renewable energy commercials!
Power of the Sun (Bronze Medal Clio Award Winner)
(Apparently Solon has gotten negative feedback that the batteries look too much like bombs, aka terrorism attack.)
Power of the Wind (“Golden Lion” Winner at the Cannes Advertising Festival)
(Honestly, the wind one would be a lot better if they closed with a helicoptor pan of the “wind guy” on top of a wind turbine raising his arms in victory to more strongly tie the link.)
1 Comment | Arts, Music, Culture, Energy, Environment, Minnesota, Renewable Energy, Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
Isn’t that a loaded title? But if that’s what it takes to get your attention…
I’m going to show you a pollution policy slight of hand…How renewable energy helps global warming when there aren’t any greenhouse gas regulations, and doesn’t when there are…Impossible? Read on.
Most people think global warming is bad and most think that renewable energy is at least one solution to it. But it really depends on the regulatory framework that a government implements.
One of the most popular is called “cap and trade,” which was wildly successful at reducing sulfur dioxide from coal power plants, i.e. acid rain. Essentially the government tells industry the total amount of carbon emissions in tons that they can emit and allocates a proportional amount to each power plant as “emission permits,” either through historical generation data, an auction, or some other method. If you emit 100 tons in a year, you have to have 100 tons of permits at the end of the year. If you were allocated 75 tons of permits, you have to either reduce your emissions 25 tons by adding new technology or buying permits from someone else who reduced theirs. If you don’t, there’s a penalty, usually a fine. And the cap theoretically goes down every so often, leaving less emissions permits. Those that want to innovate can and those that don’t, don’t have to. It’s not free - industry still has to pay for the reductions somehow - but it allows the cheapest options to oversave and sell their permits to the more expensive options. Making your plant more efficient, using renewable energy, or if allowed, preserving forest in Costa Rica could all be options with different costs. Genius.
But here’s the catch with renewable energy (or energy efficiency for that matter) - under a traditional cap and trade system, the carbon emissions are the same regardless of whether there were 0 wind turbines or 5000. The emissions are capped and the carbon savings are resold as permits to someone else so they can emit their carbon. One of the big questions, is who should own the permits, the wind facility or the coal plant? But that’s a policy decision, not a technical one. Of course, you get more energy to work with (extra electricity, natural gas, or whatever) that was freed up by the carbon-free wind turbine, but the emissions will still happen. Under a cap and trade system, renewable energy makes us more carbon efficient but doesn’t reduce carbon more than would have already happened.
In a carbon-only regulatory framework, if wind energy is a cheap carbon-saving option, it will still happen, bringing all those lovely value-added economic development benefits. But you’ve probably heard of these state requirements that 10% of electricity be from renewable sources in various places - renewable portfolio standards (RPS). This is a totally separate requirement from a carbon one, at this point. There’s almost always a similar permit trading mechanism (they call them credits though) - someone can overgenerate their renewable energy sell it to someone who undergenerated. Wind energy that is the cheapest renewable resource would get installed.
If a wind turbines constructed for an RPS can count toward a carbon-cap and trade, the result is the same amount of emissions regardless - the “cap” is the limit. The usually set by some compromise between politics and science and will lower the levels of emissions in a predictable pattern over time. This effectively sets the carbon permit prices at the incremental cost of the wind energy over the wholesale cost for the RPS portion of the carbon reductions.
But if they don’t count and an RPS is over and above the cap and trade limit, those additional wind turbines are saving carbon - cap + RPS. You would have wind turbines being built, some of which are saving carbon and some of which aren’t, depending on where the “permits/credits” are applied.
That’s the nutshell version. There are a lot of legal frameworks that have to get developed to figure out who owns what under what regulatory regime. I’ve heard of an idea in Britain to create a cap and trade system for the average consumer…You get an electronic card and have to use it to deduct carbon from your carbon account when you buy gas, use electricity, etc. If you run out, buy more from the “market” or do without. This seems awfully complicated for the average consumer and would probably make them resent global warming more than their concern cares for it, if not for the very visible costs it creates (if it happens at the industry level and prices rise, it’s more hidden and can be blamed on other things like weather, market speculation, etc).
Does this mean we shouldn’t install wind turbines? No. Under a cap and trade, they would make us more electricity efficient - we’d get more electricity for the same amount of carbon, which is a good thing. Think of them as one of many options for allowing more electricity for the same carbon. But the level of carbon wouldn’t actually be reduced any more than normal. Of course, there could be a day shortly where wind energy is implemented because it’s cheaper and provides a nice portfolio diversification for electricity generation that provides a measure of risk management. That’s what we ultimately want in the end.
Resource: Implications of Carbon Regulation for Green Power Markets (National Renewable Energy Lab, 2007)
2 Comments | Energy, Environment, Renewable Energy, Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
In November of 2003 I was diagnosed with illiotibial band friction in my left knee and told the only thing I could do was stretch it and try to build up pain stamina by increasing my short jogging distance every few days. I had previously done light stretching before every exercise. After 3-4 months of physical therapy and stretching, I got fed up with it and quit stretching. Three weeks later the pain was gone.
For the last three years I’ve played club and league ultimate frisbee 2-3 days a week (seasonal), i.e. lots of sprinting, and didn’t stretch beforehand. I do about 5 minutes of jogging, cross-overs, and a bit of cutting instead. I have been injury free for 3 years and never stretch. Am I crazy?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control doesn’t think so. They published a meta-study in 2004 that found “no benefit positive or negative in stretching to preventing injuries”:
“For Dr. Thacker’s paper The Impact of Stretching on Sports Injury Risk: A Systematic Review of the Literature (PDF) he and his colleagues pored over nearly 100 other published medical studies on the subject. Their key conclusions: stretching does increase flexibility; the highest-quality studies indicate that this increased flexibility doesn’t prevent injuries; few athletes need extreme flexibility to perform their best (perhaps just gymnasts and figure skaters); and more injuries would be prevented by better warmups, by strength training, and by balance exercises, than by stretching.” (BioMechanics Magazine, October 2004)
Pretty much everyone I tell this to thinks I’m crazy. As was pointed out last night by some WAFC-league teammates, science also brings us evolution, global warming, and by association, American freedom haters, so can we really trust it? But I think this is another “idea” that’s gone “scientific.”
Did you know that the recommendation for 8 glasses of water each day has no scientific basis either? Sure you need liquid, but 8 is essentially made-up. (“Drink at least eight glasses of water a day.” Really? Is there scientific evidence for “8 8”?, American Physiological Society, August 2002).
So go ahead and stretch if you’d like to. Maybe it feels good. Maybe there’s a placebo effect. Maybe everyone else is doing it. Maybe stretch after you workout (a totally different motivation). But don’t tell me it prevents injury.
3 Comments | Amusing, Minnesota, Science, Sports, Washington DC | Permalink
Posted by solarkismet
