Articles by
Paul Gipe
Trip Report: Bakersfield to LAX in a Bolt
By
Paul Gipe
In my first extended trip in our 2017 Chevy Bolt EV, I drove down to the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) Marriott for a conference, a one-way distance of 120 miles. Unlike my previous experience driving to LAX in an electric vehicle (EV), I don't have much to report. The Bolt worked as designed and I had ample charge and could stay with traffic.
Performance of Swiss Darrieus Wind Turbine Alpha Real Mirrors that in California of the 1980s
By
Paul Gipe
The 1992 report on the project by the Centre de Recherche Energétiques et Municpales reads like so many of the others from the period. In short, the four-year project was a failure for a host of reasons that the report highlights.
French Post Card and CENG’s Darrieus Turbine
By
Paul Gipe
Wind historian extraordinaire Etienne Rogier sent me a carte postale (post card) promoting a 1988 French postage stamp. The card depicts the postage stamp and an experimental Darrieus turbine.
Copes is No More: The Darkness Descends as the Last of the Independent Grocers Bites the Dust
By
Paul Gipe
We'd seen the signs before we left. For the past several months we watched the inventory disappear. Then they took out some rows of shelving, but the inventory continued to shrink. All signs we'd seen before at Green Frog.
Chevy Bolt Self-Sealing Tires Work But More Difficult to Repair
By
Paul Gipe
Motoring along at night returning from a meeting and suddenly I hear a thump, thump, thump. Geesh. We only had the car two months and now a flat tire.
The Nature Conservancy Clams Up on Ducted Turbine Debacle–Who Will Pay to remove it?
By
Paul Gipe
The Nature Conservancy (TNC), one of the nation's premier land preservation trusts, isn't talking about its failed investment in a ducted wind turbine debacle 1,000 miles from Hawaii.
Etienne Rogier on the Operation of France’s Post War Wind Turbine “Neyrpic”
By
Paul Gipe
French wind historien Etienne Rogier has published an article on French post war wind turbines in the latest issue of the house organ for the Fédération des Moulins de France.
FaceBook Comments on SheerWind Ducted Disaster
By
Paul Gipe
The following are comments to Another Ducted Device Dead: SheerWind-Invelox Bankrupt. They were so insightful I decided to repost them here where they are more easily archived.
Another Ducted Device Dead: SheerWind-Invelox Bankrupt
By
Paul Gipe
My inbox saw a flurry of emails 4 January 2018 to inform me that ducted turbine darling SheerWind-Invelox was bankrupt. While the event wasn't much of a surprise, it did take much longer than I'd expected.
Environmental Costs of Electric Power Generation in Germany
By
Paul Gipe
Oy Vey! It appears I've been following scientific estimates of the environmental costs from conventional electric power generation for at least 30 years. It's probably been longer, but I found documentation that I've been writing about this controversial topic since at least 1988 when Olav Hohmeyer published his groundbreaking study on the topic for Germany's Fraunhofer Institute.
Bolt EV Works after Two Weeks of Idleness
By
Paul Gipe
We returned home after a two-week Christmas holiday. We found the Bolt where we left it. Always a good sign here in Bakersfield where cars disappear from the owners' drive way on a regular basis.
Germany’s First Feed-in Tariff Law was born out of Rage against Electric Utilities
By
Paul Gipe
Germany's groundbreaking law on feeding renewably-generated electricity into the grid came about because of an unlikely alliance of two politicians from opposite poles of the political spectrum: Matthias Engelsberger and Wolfgang Daniels.
