Articles by
Paul Gipe

Trip to Bird Springs Road in a Nissan Leaf
By
Paul Gipe
We’ve been driving our 2015 Nissan Leaf for two months now and it was time to take it on a road trip—a short one, mind you, but one long enough to test our range anxiety. We set out Monday morning to visit friends on Bird Springs Road, in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Bakersfield. Of course that doesn’t tell one much about the route or the location.

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations or EVSEs
By
Paul Gipe
Electric Vehicles (EVs) are different from the cars we’re accustomed to. They use electricity stored in the traction batteries to power the vehicle. They don’t use gasoline or diesel fuel. As a consequence, true EVs--those vehicles that rely solely on batteries without “range extenders”--can’t use the existing network of gasoline stations and gasoline pumps to “refuel”.

Why We Chose a Nissan Leaf for Our EV
By
Paul Gipe
It was fairly simple really. Tesla was out. Too much money. At more than 100,000 the Tesla is well out ... Read more

Why We Went Electric
By
Paul Gipe
We’d been planning to buy a plug-in hybrid for some time. Just seemed to make so much sense on so ... Read more
Update on Japanese FIT Installations: 12,600 MW Now Installed
By
Paul Gipe
Since Japan implemented its Feed-in Tariff program, the country has installed 12,600 MW of new renewable capacity–more than 90% of ... Read more

Ollie’s Electric Car Pledge and Our Move to an EV
By
Paul Gipe
It worked. Ollie Danner’s Electric Car Pledge and his organizational skills are the reason we’re now driving an EV or ... Read more
Updated Tables of Feed-in Tariffs Worldwide
By
Paul Gipe
Updated tables on Feed-in Tariffs including Chinese offshore wind tariffs announced in June 2014 and Egyptian wind and solar tariffs.

Oasis in a Charging Desert—Independence, California
By
Paul Gipe
The Owens Valley is a desert. A beautiful desert at the base of the rugged Sierra Nevada, but a desert nonetheless. There are few towns, few people, and even fewer services. So it was more than a little surprising while on vacation that I came face to face with the future—in the Owens Valley.
Enhancing the Investor Appeal of Renewable Energy [with FITs in the USA]—A review
By
Paul Gipe
Make no mistake, the innocuous sounding title of this academic paper harbors an intellectual assault on public policy created by long-held beliefs in neoliberal ideology. Mormann certainly will not endear himself to AWEA, SEIA, SEPA and the alphabet soup of K Street lobbyists with his unambiguous call to end tax credits: “In light of the conceptual superiority of a feed-in tariff over the current tax credit regime, tax incentive support for US renewables should be phased out as the feed-in tariff goes online.”

IZES: Auctions Result in Higher PV Prices in France than FITs in Germany
By
Paul Gipe
Craig Morris at Renewables International has pointed out a startling chart in IZES (Institut für ZukunftsEnergieSysteme) report comparing auction systems ... Read more
Greenbyte: The Evolution of Wind Power Interactive World Map
By
Paul Gipe
Nicely done map portraying the growth of wind energy worldwide from 1980 to the present sorted by country.
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern First German State to Produce 100 Percent RE
By
Paul Gipe
The former East German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern became the first German state to generate more electricity with renewable energy than ... Read more
