Hello! Although I’ve worked in engineering,medicine, and education, I’ve enjoyed teaching math the most, at various universities and colleges in Illinois and Florida and sharing knowledge and experience for over twenty years (8 out of 20 years involved in online math courses). When I am not teaching (on site and/or online), you’d find me practicing yoga or qigong, reading, painting/sketching, listening to music, traveling, learning about natural medicine, and finding ways to help speeding up the process of our planet earth’s conversion to solar/renewable/clean energy.
I welcome your comments and questions: sunisthefuture@gmail.com.
Let’s helpone another to increase our understanding of conversion to solar/renewable/clean energy.
Founder/Owner/President of Sun Is The Future, Susan Sun Nunamaker
Susan Sun Nunamaker started Sun Is The Future early in Jan., 2011 and is the Founder/Owner/Editor/Producer of Sun Is The Future.
Susan Sun Nunamaker’s responsibilities: research, write, edit, post, photograph, produce, interview, market & promotion.
Michael Nunamaker helped with filming of World Solar Challenge in Oct., 2011, then officially joined Sun Is The Future as the Chief Technology Officer in 2012.
Michael Nunamaker’s responsibilities: research, video-record, rendering video, IT.
~have a bright and sunny day~
Posted by sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker, sunisthefuture@gmail.com
Previously I’ve uploaded many of our solar events/interviews at susansunnunamaker’s channel, but for better organization purpose, from this point forward, all videos pertaining to the topic of solar energy will be uploaded at sunisthefuture Youtube Channel.
Below is one of the many video clips at the Finish Line of American Solar Challenge 2012 (near the Capitol Building of St. Paul, MN) that’s been made available by sunisthefuture. This one is about the arrival of CalSol/University of CA-Berkeley Solar Vehicle escorted by its team members. More videos will continue to be uploaded. Enjoy! Your comments, questions, suggestions, concerns are welcomed below or at sunisthefuture@gmail.com .
~have a bright and sunny day~
Gathered, written, and posted by sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker
Any comments and suggestions are welcomed at sunisthefuture@gmail.com
Please also get into the habit of checking at these sites below for more on solar energy topics:
I would like to use today’s post to respond to one of your concerns. This is what DS commented,
“Making cash as a home-owner with solar used to be easy but with the government’s FIT being drastically reduced, consumers won’t get the money back they want from solar panels.”
Hi, Dear DS,
I need to clarify that http://sunisthefuture.net is inclusive of solar energy issues from all corners of the planet. Some parts of the earth is ahead (such as Germany and UK) of US in terms of the effectiveness in implementing Feed-In-Tariff policy, even though FIT originated from US back in the 1978. We only have very few municipalities in US that had introduced very effective FIT while majority of the US does not enjoy the effective FIT policy at all.
Having said that, consumers who have already installed their solar panels in UK should/would have received the guaranteed Feed-In rate for 25 years (please correct me if I am mistaken) or so at a very profitable level. However, after many people in UK have signed up and installed their solar panels, the periodic evaluation adjusted the Feed-In rate to a much lower level to reflect the decreased need for more solar panels to be installed in UK. So those who did not sign up early enough would not be able to obtain the higher and more profitable Feed-In rate. So, Hurry Up before the August 1, 2012 deadline is reached! Below, I have a video clip of an UK solar company (Green Home Company) reminding every one that UK government had delayed the reduction for FIT rate deadline to August 1, 2012.
But even this will be subject to change because the whole research and development system is quite dynamic. As better and more efficient technology will surface, the cost of generating solar energy will be lowered. When the cost of generating solar energy will be much lower than the retail rate, even the lowered feed-in rate will become profitable for consumers again. All governments that implement FIT should have periodic review of the feed-in rate and may increase or decrease according to the need. Our focus should be on lowering the cost of generating solar energy so to increase the profitability of installing solar even at a lowered feed-in rate;this can be accomplished much more quickly by implementation of FIT world wide. The more solar energy is in demand, the more innovations and R & D, and this will lead to decreased cost of generating solar energy. After all, our main concern is to help all earthlings to move onto a new renewable energy age and be weaned from dependence on fossil fuels. FIT simply helps to provide the initial incentive to get people to start paying attention and get active! It is the most effective tool in getting the engine started in the vehicle for Survival of All Earthlings Through Renewables.
Please let me know if you’d like to have any part of the above paragraph further embellished. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain FIT.
~have a bright and sunny day~
Gathered, written, and posted by sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker
Any comments and suggestions are welcomed at sunisthefuture@gmail.com
Please also get into the habit of checking at these sites below for more on solar energy topics:
If you are in favor of renewable, clean, or solar energy, please sign this petition for FIT/CLEAN Program, accessible at http://sunisthefuture.net/?page_id=1065Thank you very much.
Because of S from our previous post, I was inspired to dig a bit further into Goal Zero products and found some spectacularly useful items in the Nomad 3.5 series, Guide 10 Plus Adventure Kit, Yeti 1250 series, etc. that are extremely handy in times of traveling outdoors or during emergency situations. Nomad 3.5 is light and user friendly (just plug it in with USB), able to charge your cell phone with few hours of sunlight;Guide 10 is able to power IPad, tablets, etc.; Lighthouse Lantern (with USB port) is also able to charge tablet and cell phone, chargeable from either solar panels or crank;more products with USB port such as Bolts flash light that is chargeable from solar panels or computer; solar supportable Rock Out speaker(with built-in Li battery) that may run for 20 hours and daisy chained to provide surround sound quality. Finally, the emergency preparedness support for refrigeration, defibrillator, medical emergency equipments etc., can be found in the big black box of Yeti 1250. Without further ado, please take a look at these super cool items during the presentation of Goal Zero products at Outdoor Retailer, below:
Big Thanks to S for having brought all of us to this corner. Be sure to remember to compare shop (compare prices) with amazon.com . Hopefully, we will all be much better prepared for any potential emergency situation (such as hurricane, tornado, power outage, squirrels ) in the future, still have access to power, off the grid.
~have a bright and sunny day~
Gathered, written, and posted by sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker
Any comments and suggestions are welcomed at sunisthefuture@gmail.com
Please also get into the habit of checking at these sites below for more on solar energy topics:
If you are in favor of renewable, clean, or solar energy, please sign this petition for FIT/CLEAN Program, accessible at http://sunisthefuture.net/?page_id=1065Thank you very much.
For those of you who are frequent travelers, the message I’ve received and my response below may be of interest to you.
Hello Susan,
I hope this email finds you well. I am about to venture out and part of that time will be in quite remote area without access to normal power, which brings about a dual focus question.
1. Do you have an experience with quality small pocket/backpackable solar chargers? What may be a good kind to go after? Ideally I need to be able to charge a smartphone and mobile wifi device from it, and probably have it to have an internal battery that stores the power for usage later.
2. What about laptop/tablet chargers with larger capacity, any experience with them? At our india office, the staff are already experiencing major power cuts in their homes, basic communications are becoming hard for them. Keeping their simple water fans going is becoming almost impossible due to constant power cuts. I have an idea to gift at least some smaller (laptop, phone, small electronics) charger units to a few of them, but I need at least 5-10 of them to fit into a carryon, or checked bag at most. I’d love it I could get more but i don’t know that much quantity of battery would even be allowed in a checked bag.
I had a small phone charger unit about 3 years ago that was basically useless it held so little charge it would give you maybe 10 minutes of talk time when it was full, one of the energizer emergency power units powered by two AA had more power! Obviously we’ve come a long ways since then but want to make sure I get a quality device and dont waste money on one of these old useless units.
Whenever I need to search for items/products, I try to utilize amazon.com ‘s product/consumers’ reviews (under solar charger-electronics, sorted by average customer review).
Even if I haven’t had much experience with backpackable solar charger, I hope this will help:
Please look over these products and see if these will be of assistance to you.
S, I’ve also come across the new GoalZero Sherpa 50 Solar Charger (charging every thing from cell phone, tablet, laptop, TV, DVD, IPad,etc., with 12v output as well as a laptop/16v output), being smaller (half of the weight and size) than previous year’s model, available in June of 2012, in the video clip below:
It sounds great from the clip, if any of you out there have personal experience in using this new GoalZero Sherpa, please share it with us. Look forward to hearing/reading from you!
Please pay close attention to the last paragraph in this link. Basically, I believe TSA does not want people to transport Li-ion battery in significant number outside of personal use for one’s own laptop and camera. Perhaps you’d need to consider the route of snail mail.
I will try to post your questions on http://sunisthefuture.net and see if any one else will be able to provide some additional input with his/her experience.
Have a great trip. Whenever I travel overseas, I’d bring the herb Pau d’Arco to boost my immune system ( it is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal;when taking Pau d’Arco, I had to take a lot of water and I took it at eight hour interval, usually at 3 capsules each time if I’ve already been exposed to the microorganisms).
Be well,
sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker
~have a bright and sunny day~
Gathered, written, and posted by sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker
Any comments and suggestions are welcomed at sunisthefuture@gmail.com
Please also get into the habit of checking at these sites below for more on solar energy topics:
If you are in favor of renewable, clean, or solar energy, please sign this petition for FIT/CLEAN Program, accessible at http://sunisthefuture.net/?page_id=1065Thank you very much.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Dear Friends & Readers, one of you emailed me and asked this question, below:
Maybe you have some business ideas for my brother. He knows the building and architecture business. Knows all materials and specifications for big buildings as well as little houses. He has been a salesman for building products, has been a specifications writer for big projects, overseen buildings for architects and builders, hospitals, convention center, office buildings. He can’t find work here now. He needs to get into the new Solar energy business….
Dear C,
For your brother, since he has so much experience and connections in building industry, I would recommend setting up a business in “Energy Efficiency Auditing” and/or “Solar Installation”, helping home owners and businesses to find different ways to reduce the amount of energy used: be it in installing attic fans, changing light bulb to compact flourescent bulbs, using light color (white) for roof (where it is allowed), changing to tankless hot water heater, using solar hot water heater, using solar energy to heat pools, using solar lights/lamps in the yard, etc. He may even be able to get government subsidies to start a company involved in energy efficiency or solar energy. If he needs more information, I would suggest going to my http://sunisthefuture.net and find the April 18, 2011, post on Incentive For Solar (2) for links and US Dept. of Energy SunShot Initiative (if he may be interested in researches) Contact people at DC and DOE’s Solar America Communities program and April 24, 2011, post on Incentive For Solar (4)-For Consumers for individual states’ listing of solar incentives. You/he can get to this post by clicking the orange link at left or going to the Archives in the right margin of http://sunisthefuture.net, click on April 2011, then click on 24 under April 2011. Read this post (April 24, 2011 post of http://sunisthefuture.net)and listen to the video clip EERE Program Overview. Then click on the orange link to find out more information about where the subsidies for consumers (for different parts of the US) are because with better understanding of where the consumers’ subsidies will be coming from, your brother will be better equipped to appreciate where the potential clients’ needs will be. Call and learn about what and how he may be able to get started in energy industry. Once he is more clear about what exactly he wants to do, then he can start publicizing for his business via internet (I recommend WordPress to set up a web site), Facebook, twitter, and various social networking strategies. It is important to be clear about what his goal is. He needs to learn as much about energy industry as possible. If he visits http://sunisthefuture.net , it is free. My Jan. 10, 2012 post at http://sunisthefuture.net also mentioned an online institute, Solar Living Institute, that has various online courses and training programs if your brother is interested (this would cost something) . In addition to government subsidy, there is a private lending organization call Kiva (I have also written about this organization in Jan. 1, 24, 25, 2012 posts of http://sunisthefuture.net ;Jan. 1, 2012 post ;Jan. 24, post; Jan. 25, 2012 post). Kiva will help legitimate green businesses to get started by lending/microfinancing. So I would recommend that your brother try to learn as much as he possibly can about energy efficiency and solar energy before deciding on what direction will be most suitable for him. Be sure to write out a business plan before approaching U.S. Department of Energy and Kiva for monetary help. There is no guarantee in life, but knowledge is power and better organization and planning ahead is always a good idea before starting on any project. Perhaps he may not even need any outside assistance to get started.
Best to any of your future endeavors and please let me know if you should have any other questions.
I also welcome ( via sunisthefuture@gmail.com ) any of you out there who would like to help C’s brother out with any additional comments, suggestions, or business ideas . I am in the process of setting up an extension of http://sunisthefuture.net that will allow more of you to participate in the forum format in the near future.
Be well,
~have a bright and sunny day~
written & posted by sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker, sunisthefuture@gmail.com
If you are in favor of renewable/CLEAN energy, please sign the petition page showing support for FIT/CLEAN Program at http://sunisthefuture.net/?page_id=1065 Thank you.
Dear Readers,
I’ve just been notified by several people who were trying to sign the petition that it is not functioning properly. As it turned out, this petition plugin functions just fine when the petition is only on one page and runs into trouble when it is placed on multiple locations. So those of you who signed the petition on Saturday were able to be counted, but those who tried to sign on Sunday were not counted. I am trying to work around this problem and will notify those of you who were kind enough to let me know once the correction and modifications are made. So, please try to sign it again later (once the bug has been resolved) if you were having difficulty (not counted) earlier. As a rule of thumb, you will always be notified after you have signed the petition. This is just a momentary bug I have to get around. For the moment, I am removing extra petition pages and replacing them with a link at the beginning of each page. Thank you for your patience and I will resume the presentation on Solar Decathlon in the next post.
posted by sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker, sunisthefuture@gmail.com
Homepage: http://sunisthefuture.nethttp://sunisthefuture.comhttp://sunisthefuture.org
Any comments and suggestions are welcomed at sunisthefuture@gmail.com
Please also get into the habit of checking at these sites below for more on solar energy topics:
Happy July 4th!! (Creative Commons, shot from Anderson and Villanova, 07/04/2010)
Firstly, Happy July 4th!!!
If you are in favor of renewable/CLEAN energy, please sign the petition page showing support for FIT/CLEAN Program at http://sunisthefuture.net/?page_id=1065 Thank you.
A thousand apologies for this delayed post. As a result of some family matters, my time had been very restricted this past month. But the upside of this is the fact that I had the opportunity to be exposed to people from various states and a chance to spread more of words on solar/renewable energy and the idea of Feed-In-Tariff. I also came across an article, Are Feed-In Tariffs Part of Colorado’s Solar Future?, by James Cartledge in ColoradoEnergyNews, indicated that solar industry groups from 13 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland-DC, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, have said it is high time for the entire country to make use of feed-in-tariffs to encourage homes and businesses to generate their own solar power.
In recent years, I’ve often heard some young people responding to any discussion of our national energy or national debt issues with a “I don’t care and why should we the youth care?” attitude. So, it is my pleasure to have come across and be able to share this next youtube clip, developed by a young lady from my home state of sunny Florida, Yelena of University of Florida, who understood that our youth now will be the ones who will be most affected by the energy policy implemented today. The real cost of energy include energy security, environmental pollution, and the impact of climate change. Our youth of today will be paying for these cost of energy tomorrow. The sooner more of our youths will come to appreciate Feed-In-Tariff(s) (aka Renewable Energy Dividend Policy), the better chance these youths will not have to pay as high of a price in the future. Yelena managed to have interviewed Ed Regan, the Assistant General Manager of Gainesville Regional Utility, who was responsible for the implementation of Feed-In-Tariff in Gainesville, FL and from Andrew Walmsley, Assistant Director of Agriculture Policy of Florida Farm Bureau. You will be able to see/hear Mr. Regan explaining how/why Feed-In-Tariff approach would be superior to the stand-alone Renewable Portfolio Standard and countries with Feed-In-Tariffs end up with more renewable energy at lower cost (reported by National Renewable Energy Lab). We will also hear from Tim Morgan, the President and CEO of TM Industries, Jennifer Morgan, owner of MGI Solar Electric Power, and Don Davis, President of Capital City Bank, explain how local communities would benefit tremendously and quickly from implementing Feed-In-Tariff.
Put it simply, Feed-In-Tariff is an incentive policy that requires the power company to buy renewable energy from any one who produces it. No matter how small the producer is, the power company has to buy the renewable energy from the producer. Different tariff rates are set for different renewable energy technologies, linked to the cost of resource development in each case. Typically, FITs include three key provisions:
guaranteed grid access
long-term contracts (often 15-25 years) for the electricity produced
purchase prices that are based on the cost of renewable energy generation and tend towards grid parity
The cost based prices therefore enable a diversity of projects (wind, solar, etc.) to be developed while investors can obtain a reasonable return on renewable energy investments.
Finally, we have affirmation from FARE (Florida Alliance For Renewable Energy), stating that Feed-In-Tariff, had proven to be the most effective incentive program for rate payer (meaning least costly) for rapid wide spread deployment of renewable energy toward the path for Energy Independence, Job Creations, and Economic Stimulation. I believe it is very apropos to give a big SHOUT-OUT for Feed-In-Tariff in our celebration of July 4th, to remind not only those 13 states, but throughout USA that we are ready to walk down the path for ENERGY INDEPENDENCE, JOB CREATIONS, and ECONOMIC STIMULATION…we want Feed-In-Tariff !
Hi, Dear Readers of sunisthefuture.net or sunisthefuture.com,
If you are in favor of renewable/CLEAN energy, please sign the petition page showing support for FIT/CLEAN Program at http://sunisthefuture.net/?page_id=1065 Thank you.
In the effort of trying to help my readers to speed up loading time, I will be emailing you directly rather than responding to you at my site. Thank you so much for your support and positive comments. You are the reason that I am continuing posting with such consistency and enthusiasm. Please feel free to spread the words on use of solar energy and this site, http://sunisthefuture.net, with your friends, relatives, and neighbors. I will try to find information that may be of use to you, so please feel free to let me know what areas of interest, your concerns, and your questions concerning solar energy (or how transitioning into solar energy may benefit you). I will try my very best to respond and obtain information for you. I hope as time continues, you will get into the habit of looking for opportunities toward the direction of the sun. My most recent series on Incentive For Solar will hopefully be able to help readers to identity possible financial opportunities and potential community projects and activities any where on planet earth. More will be continuing in this series.
Some of the readers from CA notified me of blank rectangular spots in my posts resulting from blocking software. Apparently some of the blocking software out there would block any graphical images (even including RSS feed symbol), so if you are viewing these posts with blank rectangles, please be sure to also check out the posts else where for more complete posts (because a lot of graphical images also include maps, charts etc. that would be of use to you). Sun Is The Future is now also available via Amazon Kindle. Please feel free to leave a review or comment for Sun Is The Future at Amazon Kindle store.
Lastly, at some of your request, I will try to load more video clips and translator (thus far Sun Is The Future has reached over 33 countries) in the near future. Some of you also would like to see a forum being developed at Sun Is The Future. I promise I will look into this. I hope, with all of your help, Sun Is The Future will accelerate the momentum of our planet earth’s movement toward the Sun.
Thank you for all of your input.
Have a sunny day and a lovely week.
sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker, sunisthefuture@gmail.com
If you are in favor of renewable/CLEAN energy, please sign the petition page showing support for FIT/CLEAN Program at http://sunisthefuture.net/?page_id=1065 Thank you.
This is a quick post/response to clarify the policy regarding the use of material here at Sun Is The Future. Some of the readers enjoyed these posts so much that they inquired if they may use their favorite articles/posts elsewhere. You may use excerpt (a passage or quotation taken or selected from a book, document, film, or the like; extract. ) of any of the posts and have it linked back to the site http://sunisthefuture.net . I hope this is clear. If you have any additional questions, please email me via sunisthefuture@gmail.com Thank you. I will continue our discussion regarding Incentive For Solar in the next post.
Posted by sunisthefuture-Susan Sun Nunamaker
