The 'Wind Kids'

When local high school teacher Andy Swapp and his students set up their first met tower and started measuring the wind resource in Milford, they had no idea they were paving the way for a 200MW wind farm, but thats what happened! Watch the story of how the 'Wind Kids' helped bring a major wind project and all the benefits of wind power to their town revitalizing the local economy and providing power to tens of thousands of households in Southern California.

Working Towards Greener Glassblowing

Eco-Friendly Ornaments

Blown Glass Ornament Ball - Tomato Orange Red

This glass was blown in an environmentally conscious manner in our Low-Energy Consumption 'Hot-Shop' powered in part by Renewable Wind Energy through our Power Company's 'Green Works' Program. We ship using Recyclable cardboard and Bio-Bubble, a 100% Bio-Degradable bubble wrap.

Hand blown glass ornament by Dean Wolf of Wolf Art Glass, Austin, Texas. Beautiful transparent tomato orange red swirled ball 3.75 inches in diameter. Lovely for your tree, to hang in a sunny window, or as a thoughtful gift! Each ornament is beautifully gift boxed and ready to ship to the glass lover on your holiday gift list!

View more of our ornaments here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/wolfartglass?section_id=6185422

‘Green’ Jobs Await Returning Vets

Marine veteran Ben Noland installs a solar panel at Flannagan’s bar in Dublin. After an 18-month job hunt, he was hired by a company using only veterans for installations.

By: Andy Brownfield

December 4, 2011

Ben Noland served in the Marine Corps for eight years, then spent 18 months looking for a job. “I’ve probably put my resume in to 300 places in the past year,” said Noland, who is 33. “The farthest I’ve ever got was a phone interview.”

Noland, who lives in the northwestern Ohio town of Kenton, finally landed a job installing solar panels at Tipping Point Renewable Energy, a Columbus-based solar-power company that is hiring only military veterans for its installation crews at a time when unemployment among former service members is higher than among civilians.

Tipping Point’s efforts echo those of companies and groups nationwide to hire veterans in the “green energy” industry. The Denver-based nonprofit organization Veterans Green Jobs is one of the largest, having trained or placed 370 veterans in the past four years. And a pilot program by five of the country’s largest energy providers, called Troops to Energy Jobs, provides training and credentials to veterans, plus college credit for their military training and experience.

About 240,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned to the U.S. and are unable to find work. They make up a growing chunk of the 850,000 veterans who are out of work.

Veterans’ unemployment rate in October was 12.1 percent, higher than the overall rate of 9 percent. Among veterans ages 18 to 24, the jobless rate was 30.4 percent.

The renewable-energy industry is growing fast — solar and wind energy have grown more than tenfold in the past decade — and veterans often make good fits for green jobs.

In Ohio, the number of new renewable-energy projects approved by the state in the first 10 months of 2011 was more than triple that in all of 2010.

The idea for Tipping Point’s Solar by Soldiers program, which started in the summer, was inspired in part by chief technical officer Darin Hadinger’s father, a Vietnam War veteran. Hadinger said a clerical error on his father’s honorable discharge made it hard for him to find work.

Tipping Point has hired as many as six veterans for work-site staffs of nine and plans to hire at least 10 more veterans.

Visualizing The U.S. Electric Grid

Visualizing The U.S. Electric Grid

The U.S. electric grid is a complex network of independently owned and operated power plants and transmission lines. Aging infrastructure, combined with a rise in domestic electricity consumption, has forced experts to critically examine the status and health of the nation's electrical systems.

Interactive Grid Map (Click on link)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398&sc=emaf
                          
Source: American Electric Power, American Wind Energy Association, Center for American Progress, Department of Energy, Edison Electric Institute, Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Research Institute, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Western Resource Advocates

Credit: Producer: Andrew Prince; Designer: Alyson Hurt; Editors: Avie Schneider and Vikki Valentine; Supervising Editors: Anne Gudenkauf and Quinn O'Toole; Additional Research: Jenny Gold; Database and GIS Analysis: Robert Benincasa