Summer is almost here again!

This season is packed full of projects and activities. We will be at the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, up in Custer Wisconsin again this June. The dates are June 20-22. If you haven't been there yet I would highly recommend it. There are all sorts of neat booths to go to, lectures, food and entertainment. And there is a really pretty campground right down the road, with a place to swim etc. The MREA's website is www.the-mrea.org. Check it out.

The next energy fair after that is the Northwest Wisconsin Sustainable Energy Fair, in Ladysmith Wisconsin. This is there first year so I really don't know exactly what to expect. Hopefully it will be successful. Apparently they wanted to hold something more localized to draw in the community. It's a good opportunity for me as I am doing a little presentation from 12:00 to 1:00 in "the round barn." Give me a call if you are interested in learning about the fair. They don't have a website yet, but I can email a pdf of the scheduled activities, etc.

We are pretty excited about the introduction of our water heater. The very first is being installed out at the Perkins in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Mark Ring, the owner, purchased the system to replace one of his AO Smith, natural gas heaters. The Focus On Energy group in Madison, has accepted an application for the project and will be coordinating a rebate for the purchase, based on natural gas offsets, as we will be using his used fryer oil as fuel. His projected return on investment is right around one year and it should cash-flow around $2500 annually thereafter. Tomorrow I am heading out there to go over the system, which they just received Monday. This first couple of weeks it will run on natural gas only until we get the vegetable oil storage, filtration and delivery system in place. We are looking to install approximately 7 around the state and are coordinating the others daily. The information that we get from these installations will be used to further the commercialization of the product line. There is a lot that goes into launching a new product like this as one might imagine. If you are a restaurant owner in Wisconsin and are interested in being one of these first seven, give me a call, other wise check back with the site later on in the summer. We should have literature, technical data sheets and the whole nine online by then.

Last year I blogged that Joel's Hillview Greenhouse was converting his greenhouse over to vegetable oil. As with a lot of these projects, they take time to coordinate and lots of little roadblocks. It didn't happen last year, however we are hopeful to get it done this season. The greenhouse is currently being bought out by a non-profit organization and it will be going under the name Hillview Greenhouse Life Center. There mission: "The Hillview Greenhouse Life Center project seeks to utilize the growth and sale of organic produce to provide practical social support for our aging population, nourishment for our local community, and meaningful activity for all its members." Last year we were going to purchase the used vegetable oil from a local recycling center, however the market has been driven up so high due to bio diesel demand, that we can no longer afford to purchase it for the project. Therefore we are asking the local school district, hospitals and university systems to donate the fuel, which we will filter, down here at Inov8, and deliver to the green house. When we get this up and running, I will take some photos and post it in the Inov8 in Action portion of the site.

I gather the last really cool thing that I will share during this sit-down is the Revnova boiler project. We have been asked by a great number of bio diesel producers for a steam boiler that is fueled by vegetable oil. They can use a system like this for process heat. They also want to use the bi-product glycerin as fuel. Revnova's boiler has a firing rate just under one million btu's. This first one will fire on oil only, however we are looking forward to putting our new dual fuel burner on one in the near future and introducing the glycerin as part of a research and development grant we are working on. So again, another product line which will be available on the site in the near future.

This afternoon I'm meeting with a local grocery store owner. He tells me that he has four stores which generate approximately 20 gallons of used vegetable oil per week. We are going to take a look around the Ware house and see what piece of equipment will be most advantageous for him to use. At first glance I think we can use the new water heater for domestic, and install a modine for some addition space heating during the cold months. I'll take photos and post it if he decides to go through with it. I've got to run now but will try to write again soon.