District Energy Saint Paul, Minnesota

I read an interesting article about the largest thermal solar project in the upper Midwest, now atop the RiverCenter in downtown Saint Paul. The project was funded by federal funds and matched by District Energy St. Paul, which "operates the largest, most successful, hot water district heating system in North America". The company provides 80% of the heating and hot water needs to downtown St. Paul public and commercial buildings. The system covers 1,950 square meters of rooftop with 144 collectors and a capacity of 1MW.

Upon further reading the main heat source for the downtown area comes from a combined heat and power (CHP or cogeneration) plant utilizing urban wood residue. Not only does the plant produce clean electricity but it uses residual heat to provide hot water/ heating needs for the surrounding downtown area. District heating has played a huge role in reducing long term energy needs in Northern European cities for a while. Moving away from individual boiler systems producing heat/hot water for a specific building and moving it to a centralized location supplying heating for an entire area. "When adjusted for inflation, District Energy customers pay less for heating today than they did 25 years ago when service began." "Operation of the CHP plant has reduced District Energy’s reliance on coal by about 70%."
http://www.stpaul.gov/index.aspx?NID=501



It is no surprise to me that St. Paul is leading North America in this area, we have lots of urban wood, smart folk and most importantly we love our city and its future success.

Kitsilano Vancouver to Whistler Creekside

For anyone who has never witnessed the migration, here it is on a beautiful late February weekend.

PS Watch it on Vimeo's site for HD

Missoula, MT into Idaho

I'm slowly getting better at making these timelapse videos, this one was strapped to some boxes sitting shotgun. I got a speeding ticket the day before so please excuse the trucks passing me from time to time, I was takin er easy.

How to become one with a new-ish Subaru

I bought my first car in January 2011, a 2003 Subaru Forester. Perhaps being a forestry student makes this a bit laughable, but her name is all the more fitting.

Babe the Blue Ox
Being in Canada I thought this folklore beast was common knowledge. Not true and I am quite ashamed. Vancouver-ites google both Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, if you're still not impressed watch the old Disney movie.


Having never broken in a car before I did what what first came to my mind. Become familiar with the car's minute details, nothing better than spinning donuts in the state fair midway. Next spend two days driving 1,800 miles from St. Paul to Vancouver. After passing both tests with flying colors, it was time to get a little dirty and see what a Subaru is made of; 100 miles of semi-maintained forest service roads.

This trip started as most all my camping trips do, google/map the heck out of everywhere interesting until something surfaces. This search resulted in the West Harrison FSR, a logging road used extensively by 4x4 clubs with tons of other roads with access into the unforgiving southern coast mountains.

I will simply put it, we were warned by some loggers not to leave our belongings (car) unattended. Thus the backpacking trip turned into car camping.

The area has been heavily logged for over 100 years and during the gold rush days the lake was used to transport miners/product from the gold fields further north.

Harrison Lake fire tower, the views today are blocked by second growth forests but there was a time when someone was stationed up here all summer.

Can you spot our campsite? Hint: lower left nob

View from 20 mile bay

Nno backroads trip is complete without some splashing around

Movement

I will not even guess what happened here, but I bet he wasn't lucky enough to be forewarned about leaving his belongs unattended. Truck stripped, riddled with bullets and left abandoned.

Panorama Stitching Tool

So I've found a free open source panorama stitching program called Hugin. Anyone interested in making amazingly easy pans should check it out. This 180 view is from our roof this week.

Kell Hansen on Vimeo

Short timelapse from atop our roof in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver