I decided this year to register for three charity runs, all of them to support various forms of cancer. My first run is an 8k run on April 4 for prostate cancer. I’m blessed by the fact my father has twice defeated cancer — first lung cancer, then skin cancer — but like most people I also know many who haven’t been so lucky. It’s a good cause to get behind, and Toronto cancer researchers are among the best in the world.

We all give in our own way, so don’t consider this a hard sell. But I do have this forum, so I figured I’d use it. If you would like to sponsor my run, please click here and you’ll be directed to my Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation Web page where you can donate online.

Thanks in advance!

Tyler

There’s a terrific post over at the blog Grush Hour, written by SkyMeter founder and chief scientist Bern Grush. A friend in Toronto was driving to downtown to visit him, so Grush documented the crazy path this person took while driving around trying to find the cheapest parking — in this case street parking. Multiply this particular example by the hundreds or thousands every day and you begin to see the larger impact on downtown congestion, smog, and a city’s carbon footprint. Grush argues that cheap street parking has got to go. “Underpriced parking carries a small, transient benefit to individuals who happen to be lucky on a particular day, but it carries a large societal detriment to all of us each day, every day,” he writes.

I encourage you to read his full post. Very interesting.

For those of you with $120,000 to spare and a desire to drive the coolest looking emission-free vehicle on the market, Tesla Motors announced today that it has started taking orders from Canadian consumers interested in coughing up the $60,000 deposit. Personally, I hope somebody I know buys one so I can go for a spin. Open invitation to my rich Toronto readers, assuming there are any out there – if you buy a Roadster you must tell me and offer a ride!

Read the story here in the Toronto Star. I love the symbolism of the Roadster and profile it has given to electric cars, and I love the name Telsa Motors. Nikola Tesla, in my mind, is one of the world’s greatest yet underappreciated inventors. An appropriate name for a 21st-century electric car company.

First Solar’s purchase of OptiSolar’s project pipeline for $400 million in stock is a shrewd move during these uncertain economic times. To have more than 2,000 megawatts of solar projects in the pipeline — confirmed or under advanced negotiations — is a coup for the company. Land rights that offer the potential for 19 gigawatts is icing on the cake.

A lot of attention has focused on OptiSolar’s 550 megawatt PG&E project being transferred to First Solar. What hasn’t been discussed in all the media coverage, however, is what this means for the 200 megawatts or so of OptiSolar projects being developed in Ontario, specifically around Sarnia. (more…)

f you’ve been following the story of Thane Heins and have been looking for an update to his story, I had one appear this weekend in the Toronto Star. It was a year ago when I first wrote about Ottawa-born Heins, who says he has developed an electrical generator that redirects the energy in “Back EMF” that usually slows down an electrical motor-generator as it accepts load. In other words, Heins claims to have eliminated the magnetic friction and replaced it with magnetic acceleration. He calls this effect “regenerative acceleration,” but those who are skeptical of his claims say that acceleration does not equate to power/torque/work and that Heins has failed to demonstrate there is such a link.

Is it just a more — potentially much more –efficient motor? Or is it, well, more than that? (more…)