Man Offers Free Charging for Electric Cars on His Solar Farm
In the tiny Aspen sleeper community of El Jebel, Colorado, a man is on a mission. Jim Duke has always been known for his environmental streak — back in the 80s he spearheaded efforts to establish recycling and composting programs for Aspen and surrounding communities.
Now he’s spent $84,600 to install a large array of solar panels on his ranch capable of producing 15,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually — and he’s giving away the power for free to charge any electric cars who’s owners show up on his doorstep.
He’s gotten rid of his gas stove and changed out his gas boiler for an electric one. To further ween his family from carbon, he’s purchased two cars from Miles EV for every day trips to and from town.
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Although the up front costs are huge, Mr. Duke is eligible for nearly $51,000 in federal, state, local and power company credits, which take the edge off just a little bit. Still, $34,000 is a gigantic chunk of change to lay out for a project that could take decades to pay off.
But it doesn’t seem that a pay off is what Jim Duke is looking for — he sees becoming carbon neutral as an obligation to future generations and the planet, saying, “It’s way, way, way past the point for talk. It’s time for action.”
Source: The Aspen Times
Image Credit: Jordan Curet/The Aspen Times
@ Mark,
That is exactly what I am talking about. I do not want the government to mandate anything. I want them to remove the ill thought and poorly enforced restrictions and create a streamlined policy that allows companies to profitably manufacturer renewable tech. Also Mark I truly realize that I am being idealistic. I also realize that as a whole anything the govt. touches is automatically tainted, but I can still dream.
That is the way to go, the the world is getting a better place.
http://www.stichtingmilieunet.nl/andersbekekenblog/?p=5359
It only costs about $4 to fill up a Telsa for 220 miles, charging time is 8-10 hours on regular current, figure most people wont want to hang out for that long.
So for less than $2 this guy might get to meet some cool people and check out their cars.
I buy 100% wind power for my house for an additional 1 cent per KWH it costs me an extra $5 per month. I hereby invite anyone who has an electric vehicle over to my house for free charging - in exchange for a short test drive
[...] >> See Also: Man Offers Free Charging for Electric Cars on His Solar Farm [...]
Top man!
@dmoore
I think you’ll find that Government is the largest single comsumer in the market. Even if all its functions were paired down to just defense of the nation it would be still be the single largest actor in the econonmy. And in any case, you wouldn’t have a market without a government to to uphold the rule of law….
No Matt, I think you’re missing the point actually. This is *ONE* INDIVIDUAL who doesn’t have nearly the amount of money the government (our, or ANY for that matter) has.
In the words of my 90 year old Grandmother, who is a great depression survivor, “The people are the government”. Well this is one of those people, but unfortunately, most people like to just enjoy things without giving back, or in other words, sit back and watch while others actually produce.
This guy has that choice, as we all are lucky enough to. However, he has chosen to be SELFLESS. The most selfish thing, if anything, about what he’s doing is that he gets the slightest self-satisfaction from doing good things, and that is surely not why he’s doing it.
Rethink his motives before making assumptions or accusations. Doug is exactly right on what he said, but keep in mind that if good people don’t take part in government and social actions, the government will be comprised of evil parasites who use our tax money to have orgies in the sky on fancy airplanes (with our tax money, mind you), amongst other things (wrongful war, oil consumption and pollution, etc).
We can easily see that the entire human population’s actions have only come back to hurt us (economy, global warming, etc). We ALL need to shape up, myself included, but step one is being aware of this.
-Bryan
We will soon come to regard people such as this as not only the new pioneers, but the heros of our times.
Simply nice article, its good to hear about these things because it helps spread hope.
Uncle B hit the nail firmly on the head when he mentioned that we need to be well fed, ever heard the saying civilisation is 3 meals away, for those who don’t realise it, 70 % of our fertiliser comes from oil without that resorce the food which is pushed along by its energy would not be posible at the modern yields aquired today, as the world population grows, by the time we start running out of the cheap every ready energy that oils is giving us, our propblems will really start to take hold, the long term prognosis is not a pretty one.
Every thing we have here on earth is brought about from the current bun in the sky, one days worth of its rays gives enough power to supply the world by 20 times our current daily electricity consumption, this figure by the way comes from the film called,
A Crude awakening, one of the most important collection of world experts former oil company employees and other official bodies this century, check it out and don’t be supprised what you see and hear.
The Germans have been up to something of late, they have been stock pilling recycled glass for many years in huge open cast pits, former coal fields, and they are embarking on a project to build a new solar panel made entirely from glass, to capture solar energy, there is talk that they could supply their countries power needs from the hot plains of spain, convert it into electricity and transport it vis conventional means available now.
Getting back to the farmer offering free electricity how many people have an electric car that is capable of visiting his ranch way out there in the wilderness how stupid or what, does he supply a break down truck to come and fetch those who have run out of power getting there, come on.