Congratulations to Peter Amerongen on winning "Net-Zero Energy Home Champion of the Year" and to the team at Habitat Studio & Workshop Ltd on winning "Net-Zero Energy Home Product of the Year" for their PV Awning.  I believe this is the very awning that is on Conrads house.

Check out: http://netzeroenergyhome.ca/2011-award-winners

 This just in from resident Net Zero House expert and Edmonton green leader Bob Heath:

The latest issue of Home Power magazine has an article entitled "Blast From The Past" written by Martin Holladay. He tested a 33 watt PV module that he had bought in 1980 for $275.00 US. He found that the module was still performing at better than factory spec. A quote from the article - "A PV cell is a rock that makes electricity."
Another quote from the same issue of HP - "A PV module is the closest thing we have to perpetual motion [and] is the most reliable electric generator in the known universe." —Joel Davidson, SOLutions in Solar Electricity

Germany will install 6,000,000 kilowatts of PV modules this year. Shouldn’t we Albertans also be investing in these en masse in order to make our electricity supply more resilient (not to mention greener) in a future of declining fossil fuel availability?

Editor’s Note:I recently discovered a wonderful blog called Avenue Homesteader. Carissa Halton writes about her experiences with green local living in Edmonton’s Alberta Avenue area. I love her focus on food production and community efforts in the area. Carissa has generously offered up a guest post for Green Edmonton readers:

Cross-posted from http://avenuehomesteader.blogspot.com/:

For members of my household who love pumpkin pie and butternut stew, 2009 was a disappointing year. Total number of winter squash: 2. I gleaned one Buttercup and another Spaghetti squash from six large plants. It was a lot of green square footage producing a whole lot of nothing.

After some sleuthing and input from my squash-crazy sister-in-law, we’ve deducted a pollination problem. In 2009, I had plenty of flowers and the fruit would look like it was growing then instead yellow and die.

This year, I have taken matters into my own hands and started playing ‘Birds and Bees’. The first thing to surprise me was the sheer number of available male flowers and the woeful number of willing female compatriots. The ladies are more inclined to draw their virginal petals up demurely around their centre and remain like this most of the day. In my patch, fruit-making action happens exclusively in the mornings.

So if you share my problem, or skipped the Bio class where they taught this stuff, here’s how you can increase the conception rates in your squash patch:

1. First, figure out who’s female and male. The female flowers blooms from what appears to be a miniature squash. They look like they’re growing from a new fruit while the male flower buds burst from a long, narrow stem.  read more... »

Myles Kitagawa is my favourite Edmonton-based environmentalist. He articulates an intelligent, realistic vision for where we need to go as a society.

Myles works full-time, for very little money, to improve Alberta’s environment and to mitigate the impacts of humanity’s destructive activities. Watch the above video to get a feel for how well Myles understands the issues, and how much sense his approach to solving our problems makes.

Myles is the executive director of the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta, a livejournal blogger, and an occasional contributor to this website.