Articles by

Paul Gipe

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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.
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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”.
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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
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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
Our 2015 nissan leaf getting a jolt of juice.

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.
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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.”
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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