ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PROJECT

Exhibitors at the Piedmont Alternative Energy Expo®

Exhibitor and vendor information is listed alphabetically.

• The All-Electric Team From the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater DC
  
  Charlie Garlow, Bryan Murtha, and Steve Hammond, all from the Virginia, DC, Maryland area, are all pioneers in solar electric power. Charlie, Bryan, and Steve will bring electric pickup trucks.

  Charlie is one of the most enthusiastic advocates anywhere for clean energy. Charlie can put together almost any sort of solar demonstration, and for the Expo, he will set up a solar fountain. He serves in leadership positions in the Sierra Club’s Maryland Chapter, the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater DC, the Potomac Regional Solar Energy Association, the Tour of Solar Homes, and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

  Steve's electric pickup truck pulls a trailer carrying electric tractors—clean energy working hard.
  
  Bryan will be displaying his 2002 Toyota RAV4 EV that he purchased in Los Angeles, California, from Toyota. This is not a conversion or a hybrid, but a fully electric production vehicle manufactured to meet California's Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate.
  
  
• Appleton Campbell of Warrenton, Virginia
  
  Appleton Campbell is a leader in the design and installation of energy-efficient heating and cooling systems for homes and businesses. Appleton Campbell utilizes technologies developed by companies such as REHAU and UNICO.
  (Exhibitor Mark Campbell)
  Website: www.appletoncampbell.com
  
  
• Association of Energy Conservation Professionals (AECP) of Floyd, Virginia

  AELP is an energy education and advocacy organization that is involved in many projects related to providing energy education to the general public. AECP currently is developing a sustainable living educational center. (Exhibitor Billy Weitzenfeld)
  Website: www.aecp.org
  

• Aurora Energy, LLC of Annapolis, Maryland

  Aurora Energy provides solar-powered products, systems, and services to residential, institutional, and commercial clients in Maryland, DC, and Virginia.
  (Exhibitors Isaac Opalinsky and Jason Fisher)
  Contact: info@aurora-energy.com
  Website: www.aurora-energy.com
  

• Battlefield Ford-Mercury of Culpeper, Virginia

  The dealer will exhibit a Mercury Mariner Hybrid at Expo. The hybrid delivers city fuel economy of 33 mpg—up to 95 percent better than the average V-6 equipped SUV. The vehicle can operate on its gasoline engine, on electric battery power alone, or on both at the same time. (Rodger Hille, senior sales consultant)
  Contact:towermngr@aol.com
  Website: www.battlefieldfordmercury.com
  
  

• Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN)
  of Takoma Park, Maryland
  

  CCAN is the first grassroots, non-profit organization dedicated exclusively to fighting global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Their mission is to educate and mobilize citizens in a way that fosters a rapid switch to clean energy and energy-efficient products, thus fighting global warming.
  (Exhibitor Diana Dascalu-Joffe)
  
  Website: www.chesapeakeclimate.org
  

• Commonwealth Sustainability Works
  of Culpeper, Virginia

  	Commonwealth Sustainability Works

  Commonwealth Sustainability Works provides professional consulting services in the areas of green buildings, sustainable community development, and strategic planning. They help clients design, construct and furnish efficient, healthful homes, schools, and other buildings. Working with public officials and citizen groups, the company promotes diverse, walkable communities, preservation of rural land, and green economic development. They also consult with businesses and other organizations seeking to reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve environmental performance. (Exhibitor Andrew Grigsby)
  Website: www.commonwealthsustainability.com
  

• Community Housing Partners of Virginia

  CHPC provides services through community housing and economic development programming, and the provision of high-quality, environmentally sustainable housing, both single and multi-family. Exhibitor Chris Heslep will show cellulose insulation equipment and materials.
  Contact: cheslep@chpc2.org
  Website: www.chpc2.org
  

• Environmental Resources Trust of Washington, DC
  
  ERT is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that pioneers the use of market forces to protect and improve the global environment. Founded in 1996, ERT is harnessing the power of markets to address the challenges of tempering climate change, securing clean and reliable power, and encouraging environmentally beneficial land use. ERT provides consulting for wind/biomass development, solar homes, and energy efficiency.
  (Exhibitor Alden Hathaway)
  Website: www.ert.net
  
  
• Germanna Community College of Fredericksburg and Locust Grove, Virginia
  
  Germanna Community College is completing the Germanna Center for Advanced Technology outside Culpeper on Route 29. The facility, with an acre of floor space, will provide educational and training services to communities all along the Route 29 "Technology Corridor." GCAT includes classrooms, a multi-purpose auditorium, an information resource center and a manufacturing technology area—a hub for customized training in skills required by local industries. (Exhibitor Cynthia Siira)
  Website: www.germanna.edu
  
  
• Light Speed Power, Inc. of Round Hill, Virginia
  
  Physicist Charles Bigelow demonstrates the portability of the UNI-PAC™ 30 photovoltaic charger by UNI-SOLAR®. The UNI-PAC is designed to provide field communications, emergency power, and battery maintenance to military units, climbers, professional photographers, and others needing energy in the field. Bigelow, owner of the innovative-technology company Light Speed Power, Inc., in Round Hill, Virginia, uses the UNI-PAC to charge batteries for his digital camera and other devices.
  Contact: charlesbigelow@direcway.com Website: www.skypop.net
  
  
• Maryland-DC-Virginia Solar Energy Industries Association (MDV-SEIA)
  
  MDV-SEIA is the regional trade organization of the photovoltaics and solar thermal manufacturers, distributors, and component suppliers. Our membership also includes consultants and companies that design, sell, install, and maintain solar energy equipment for residential, commercial, and institutional customers throughout the region.
  
  MDV-SEIA was founded in 1984 as a 501(c)(6) trade association that promotes a growing market for solar equipment in the Mid-Atlantic region. As a trade association, it works to improve the business climate for those engaged in the solar industry. In Richmond, Annapolis, and the District, MDV-SEIA is recognized as the voice of the solar industry. The Association speaks out on solar legislation, codes, and standards issues. It seeks better financing and broad consumer awareness. (Exhibitor Peter Lowenthal)
  Website: www.mdv-seia.org
  
  
• Mike Nelms Champion Chevrolet and Toyota of Culpeper, Virginia
  
  Gary Gray of Mike Nelms Championship Toyota will display a sparkling new Toyota Prius, the much-wanted gasoline-electric hybrid. Gray notes that soon the Prius will be joined on the showroom floor by the hybrid Camry.
  Contact: champserv@hotmail.com
  Website: www.mikenelms.com
  
  

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  
  

  NASA has announced that the Mars Rover is landing at the Piedmont Alternative Energy Expo. The Rover, a model of one of the most successful American unmanned spaceships, will be displayed by NASA personnel at the Expo. According to NASA, each Rover (one is called "Spirit," the other "Opportunity") is a robotic geologist, with an arm, a drill, and three spectrometers for sampling soil. Four pairs of cameras give the Rover the ability to send 3-D images of the landscape back to Earth. The solar power plates that drive the Rover gave it the muscle to travel up to 100 meters per day. The Rovers have worked well beyond their original design lifetimes—going for a year and more past the planned 3-month work period.
  

• Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority of Arlington, Virginia

  NVRPA will present an energy education exhibit featuring the "energy cycle"—an active exhibit showing how energy is transformed and used. Also, the NVRPA representative will provide solar energy demonstrations and a fuel cell exhibit. (Exhibitor Martin Ogle)
  Website: www.nvrpa.org
  

• Oesch Environmental Design of Schuyler, Virginia

  Fred Oesch (pronounced "Esch") of Oesch Environmental Design has designed and built alternative architecture, custom interiors, furniture, and fine art for more that 25 years. His green building specialties include solar and zero energy homes, green oak timber frame, straw bale construction, living earth roofs [right], and healthful environmental control systems. Oesch is available for residential or commercial design projects worldwide, including consultation, lectures, and teaching. Fred will be on hand to present and discuss practical solutions toward affordable alternative building and energy independence, with natural materials and healthful environmental control.
  Contact: hfoesch@mindspring.com
  Website: www.hfoesch.com
  
  Also exhibiting at Oesch booth is Jessica Jones Oesch of ForeverGreen with alternative energy for the human body, FrequenSea, a whole food ionic tonic with marine phytoplankton. Visit www.frequensea.com/jessicajones for more information.

• Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative of North Carolina

  Piedmont Biofuels is a worker- and member-owned cooperative. Its mission is to lead the grassroots sustainability movement in the East Coast by using and encouraging the use of clean, renewable biofuels. In support of this mission, Piedmont Biofuels provides pure biodiesel (B100) to its community; provides a space where worker members can make their own fuel from waste vegetable oil; maintains a USDA Research Farm for oilseed crop research; owns an elaborate glycerin composting facility; provides education and outreach on both biodiesel and engine modifications to enable the use of straight vegetable oil as fuel; lobbies the North Carolina legislature, as well as our national representatives, on behalf of biodiesel and alternative fuels; and has an intern program that allows students to live onsite and learn about all facets of operations. (Exhibitor David Thornton)
  Contact: david@biofuels.coop
  Website: www.biofuels.coop
  

• Piedmont Environmental Council of Warrenton, Virginia
  

  The Piedmont Environmental Council is a 30-year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the Piedmont's rural economy, natural resources, history, and beauty. Join PEC's Madison County Land Conservation Officer, Bob Miller, to learn about a cleaner, more efficient fuel—biodiesel.
  (Exhibitors Don Loock and Robert Miller)
  Website: www.pecva.org
  

• Rae of Rappahannock County, Virginia
  
  Rae is the woman famous for Rae’s Place—the very popular eatery in Sperryville for so many wonderful years. Rae will bring her taste and talent to the kitchen a the Fairground for the Expo, offering local vegetables, Portobello burgers, bratwurst, Ginger iced tea, grape-almond chicken salad, and many other items—all of them healthy, and all of them made with loving care.
  

• Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection
  of Rappahannock County, Virginia
  
  RLEP is dedicated to preserving the natural resources and rural character of Rappahannock County, Virginia. We help the community understand issues, challenges, and initiatives that affect our natural and cultural landscape. We encourage citizens to become active participants in those things that make an environmental difference; whether defending threats to the good land we are blessed with, or promoting good programs to manage our precious environmental resources for succeeding generations. We are the hosts of the Alternative Energy Expo.
  
  
• Recovered Energy Resources of Washington, Virginia

  Recovered Energy Resources develops small-scale, renewable-energy power plants that utilize materials such as biomass, animal manure, wood wastes, and trash as fuel.
  (Exhibitor Bradley Schneider)
  
  Website: www.recoveredenergyresources.com
  

• Sierra Club, Virginia Chapter

  The Sierra Club's members are more than 750,000 of your friends and neighbors. Inspired by nature, members work together to protect communities and the planet. The Club is America's oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization. The club will provide literature on their work on energy issues. These activities are being addressed nationally, and on a state and local level. In particular, there will be material on the club's "Cool Cities" program to enlist local governments to lower their CO2 emissions. The club will also have information on initiatives at the state level. (Roger Diedrich, Chair,
  Virginia Chapter, Sierra Club)
  Website: www.sierraclub.org
  

• Solar Connexion of Blacksburg, Virginia

  Exhibitor Bryan Walsh is a NABCEP-certified photovoltaic contractor. Since 1993, he has provided customers with the highest quality products and services from simple cabin to complex solar-powered communities.
  
  There are very few people involved in solar power in the United States—especially along the east coast—who do not know the name Bryan Walsh. Bryan Walsh holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and is the founder of Solar Connexions, a design and installation firm based in Blacksburg, Virginia. Bryan and his family live in an all-solar, off the grid home that he and his wife designed. The house features both active and passive solar. Bryan is conversant will all aspects of solar power, collectors, hot water, and inverters. He will lecture at the Expo. As much as anyone, Bryan Walsh is one of those who inspired the creation of the Piedmont Alternative Energy Expo.
  Read about one of his projects in Rappahannock County.
  
  Contact: RLEP@moonlightsolar.com
  Website: www.moonlightsolar.com
  
  

• Solar Energy International of Carbondale, Colorado

  Solar Energy International is providing catalogues for distribution at Expo. SEI is a non-profit teaching organization whose mission is to help others use renewable energy through education. Solar Energy International conducts workshops from New Jersey to Belize, from Arizona to Costa Rica.
  Website: www.solarenergy.org
  
  

• Stella Group of Virginia
  
  Stella Group, Ltd., is a strategic marketing and policy firm for clean distributed energy users and companies, which include advanced batteries and controls, energy efficiency, fuel cells, heat engines, minigeneration (natural gas), microhydropower, modular biomass, photovoltaics, small wind, and solar thermal. The Stella Group’s offices are powered by solar shingles, insulated with double-pane windows, and powered, in part, with a small wind turbine. Scott Sklar, founder and president of the Stella Group, lives in a solar home in Arlington, Virginia. Sklar is bringing a solar-powered water purification system to Expo.
  Website: www.thestellagroupltd.com
  
  
• Sunelco—The Sun Electric Company of Victor, Montana
  
  Sunelco offers renewable energy products, solar, wind, micro-hydro, hydrogen fuel cells, and related products, including inverters, charge regulators, batteries and safety products. Sunelco’s Planning Guide and product catalog will be available at the Expo. (Exhibitor Tom Bishop)
  Contact: info@sunelco.com
  Website: www.sunelco.com
  
  
• "Energy Efficient" House
  
  Visit the "Tegler-Tole House," at Expo, a doll house handcrafted by Brooks Tegler and "retrofitted" by John Tole of Rappahannock County. The dollhouse will illustrate the potential for solar energy to provide varying degrees of residential space and hot water heating and electricity. Tradeoffs between technologies, potential energy savings, and installation and operating costs will be summarized. Emphasis will be on the necessity for the homeowner to adapt an educated approach to what is possible in order to utilize solar technology in an efficient, realistic, and cost-effective manner.
  
  
• TerraBuilt of Middleburg, Virginia
  
  The GreenMachine, pictured at right, produces tongue-and-groove TerraBricks made of subsoil for immediate use in the wall systems of houses and other structures. TerraBricks were used in the construction of the Weingarten house in Rappahannock County, Virginia.
  
  Website: www.terrabuilt.com
  
  
• Toy Table/Mugs/Door Prizes

  The Expo staff will have available for sale a limited number of clever educational solar-powered toys, some of which will be given to visitors as door prizes. For adult door prize winners, we have mugs that show how the contours of the earth will change as the result of global warming. When hot liquid is poured into the mugs, the ice caps melt…a truly scary sight.
  

• The Virginia Conservation Network
  
  VCN is Virginia’s only statewide network of over 119 environmental organizations, including RLEP, from across the Commonwealth. The Network’s mission is to protect the Commonwealth’s air, lands and waters for the benefit of the people, as guaranteed by the Virginia Constitution.
  Website: www.vcnva.org
  
  
• Virginia Soybean Association of Williamsburg, Virginia
  
  The association promotes Virginia soybean growers' efforts to provide a valuable product to the marketplace, whether for livestock feed or as a fuel-making component. (Exhibitor Dick Atkinson)
  Contact: soybean@visi.net
  
  
• Virginia Sustainable Building Network of Arlington, Virginia

  The Virginia Sustainable Building Network promotes environmentally sound building practices for Virginia. This is the only statewide organization promoting renewable energy and sustainable development in the Commonwealth. They provide educational programs and have U.S. Department of Energy support through the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy, which the organization uses to generate awareness in Virginia. (Exhibitors Annette Osso and Pamela Vosburgh)
  Website: www.vsbn.org
  

• Warmboard™ of Hillsboro, North Carolina
  
  Kent Garbee is coming to the Expo from Hillsboro, North Carolina, with Warmboard™ radiant floor heating systems. Warmboard™ Radiant Subfloor was used in the winning Solar Decathlon house and in the NHBA Mainstream Greenhome. (www.mainstreamgreenhome.com). Warmboard combines a structural subfloor and a thermodynamically sophisticated radiant panel into one simple component of your radiant heating system. Warmboard begins with a stiff, strong, 1-1/8", 4' x 8' sheet of tongue and groove, weather-resistant plywood. A modular pattern of channels is cut into the top surface. A thick sheet of aluminum is stamped to match the channel pattern and is permanently bonded to each panel.
  Website: www.warmboard.com
  
  
• Wilson Education of Connecticut
  
  Wilson Education is small company that provides energy education programs for schools, churches, and other groups. Its programs teach participants to view their buildings as energy consumers. Participants learn to recognize energy problems, identify cost-effective solutions, and take their finds to those who can effect change. For example, in New Jersey, students in education programs identified ways that public authorities could save more than $500,000 in energy costs per year. Program participants from Grade 5 through adult level are taught how to gather data and calculate energy savings, both in fuel units and dollars.
  (Exhibitors Carol Wilson and Marilyn Sznmaszek)
  Contact: carolwilsoned@yahoo.com
  
  
• Woodberry Forest School of Orange, Virginia
  
  Teacher Graham McBride and his AP Environmental Class have been converting kitchen waste into biodiesel fuel. The school is supporting them in their effort to convert larger amounts to be used in the school's diesel vehicles.
  Website: www.woodberry.org
  
  
• Woodstoves Unlimited of Culpeper, Virginia
  
  The company sells, services, and installs woodstoves, pellet stoves, coal stoves, gas stoves, outdoor central boilers, outdoor storage buildings, and chimney products. (Exhibitor George Shifflett)
  
  Website: www.woodstovesunlimited.com