What do you think? I made a shirt on cafepress.com with the tag line "My car runs on the sun." Is it catchy? At least the shirt is organic. I'm getting ready for the upcoming National Drive Electric Week which is happening locally at UCLA on September 16th. Apparently, there is another crazy person out there that "drives on sunshine" (is that better than "runs on the sun?") except that guy - Morgan Page - drives a Tesla instead of a Chevy Spark. And he charges it at the Wynn in Vegas instead of Culver City. To-may-to, To-mah-to. Maybe I will buy a shirt to wear to the event. Every little bit of publicity helps to get the word out. But, if anyone has read this far and is good at graphics, I'd love a better logo..I can trade for a carbon free ride to the airport..Any takers?
They say "you can't manage what you don't measure." But, I've realized that they reverse is also true, i.e. just because you measure it, that doesn't mean you can, or even intend to, manage it. I'm guessing there are terabytes of data (that's a 1 followed by 12 zeros) just sitting there, waiting for someone to take a peak and see if there is any truth about the underlying process available for use. If only the right analytics were applied, the truth would be set free. In the paradigm of data analytics, solar is a special case, a passive case. There is little about the underlying process that can be learned from the data, at least in a way that can result in any action. But, look at the pretty picture! How cool! That's a heat map of our solar energy production. Dark blue = dark outside = no/little power. Light blue = light outside = peak power. Do you remember the sudden summer storm on July 27, 2014? My solar panels felt it too. At a minimum, analytics can be fun and amusing.
I am finally beginning to live the life that The Jetsons predicted. #1: Vacuuming just magically happens at my house (thanks to my Roomba). #2 My car is powered by the sun. But, the data show that access to electric vehicles is limited to those that can afford the priviledge of a Jetsons dream. The Clean Vehicle Rebate Project, from the Center for Sustainable Energy, is geographically tracking the number of Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP) rebates. In Southern California, the distribution shows pretty clearly that rebates are high in affluent neighborhoods (red areas in the map) and low in the underprivileged neighborhoods (blue areas). This issue of inequity came up during the SB 535: Investment Justice and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund workshop that I participated in last March, hosted by UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. In the Zero-Emission Passenger Transportation breakout session, the subject was developing criteria and metrics to guide strategic investments in, with and for disadvantaged communities from Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. So, this is again coming full circle, as I work for a company that falls into California's cap and trade program, and thus contributes to the Fund that may just The Jetsons to everyone.
