Grape Thinking on Energy

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  • RayLen Solar Vineyard

    North Carolina is slowly building a very respectable wine country, located predominantly in the Yadkin valley north of Charlotte. We recently had the chance to pay an educational visit to RayLen vineyards based out of Mocksville. GT has always seen vineyards as much more than wine, energy environments if you will and RayLen is another winery backing that up, with an awesome solar install. Check out the video below for a quick look. Note: the muscadine (seeds) at the beginning is an indigenous grape to NC, which reportedly has up to 5 times as much resveratrol as other red grapes.

    My facts aren’t quite right in the video. Click below to get the full spec on their setup.

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    Taste Palace

    Found an amazing place right outside of Siena where they grow sangiovese, olives, fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts… all in balance or promiscuo as they say. Not a vineyard, not a farm… I call it a taste palace, maybe there’s a better name out there. I might work with them to install a major solar setup and some biohydrogen generating algae ponds. In my dreams, right?

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    Wine and Shine

    I saw an awesome headline today:

    Going Green Reaches Economic Tipping Point at Wine and Shine 2009

    Serious implications for vineyards! A few wineries in Cali are supposedly powering their operation from the sun, courtesy of solar installation and financing company, Conergy.

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    Nature to the Grid: Renewable Homes

    Always in search of the sustainable solution that will sweep the world, I’d like to propose a new idea.

    The green movement has no doubt tipped into the public’s consciousness, and yet still hasn’t been consolidated into a feasible, economic starting point. I attempted to unify the myriad of renewable energy and consumption/waste innovations in my last post with the concept of ‘nature to the grid’, and will now attempt to expand on it further. The question is where can the average person start incorporating this concept into their life to not just benefit their ecolistic mentality and environment, but to save and make more money?

    In continuance of our nature to the grid dialogue, I’ve come to the conclusion that it starts, from both an ecological and economical standpoint, with people taking a proactive role in turning their home into a renewable power station… turning their home into a ‘tree’ if you will.

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    Nature to the Grid: Bioenergy

    The leaf is the primary site of photosynthesis...
    Image via Wikipedia

    The clean tech economy is taking off, and it’s going to be very interesting to see what will actually work. What concept will bring it all together?

    From a production (energy) standpoint, you’ve got solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, hydro, and ethanol. And with consumption, you have to ask how are we going to create products, how are we going to deal with waste, and where are we going to get our food and water?

    When you start looking at all these variables, you seem to get to the root of the sustainability problem… it’s very fragmented. There needs to be a new holistic approach that attacks the whole issue. Where do we get our energy, our food, and a new paradigm for products and waste? To us, the answer is quite clear… it’s found in nature, where the essence is growth. Grow our food, grow our energy, grow our resources. It’s all about growth energy… bioenergy.

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