Tag Archives: Kentucky

Net zero school in Bowling Green KY

Why stop with solar Lowndes High or VHS? Why not have all our elementary and middle schools generate more solar electricity than they use, and change their power bills into profits to help pay for education? A school in Bowling Green, Kentucky is already doing that.

Chuck Mason wrote for bgdailynews.com 22 December 2012, ‘Net-zero’ school pays off,

The district received a check for $37,227.31 this year. The Tennessee Valley Authority paid the school district for electricity it generated. The school district doesn’t have a power plant, per se, like the utility company. But it does have an energy producer, the first “net-zero” school in the nation: Richardsville Elementary School.

The check is tangible evidence that net-zero pays for itself and then some.

“It has exceeded expectations. We’re seeing a savings of millions of dollars in energy costs,” state Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, said of the net-zero schools concept developing across the nation.

This is the same Bowling Green, Kentucky that has fast Internet access. Maybe that’s another reason the Chamber might want to consider comparing Bowling Green and Warren County to here.

-jsq

Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman @ LCC 2012-05-08

At a recent Lowndes County Commission meeting, I said:

I was interested to learn two weeks ago that my neighbor Timothy Nessmith was interested in getting DSL on Hambrick Road.

He said you can get it as close to him as Quarterman Road. I can attest to that because I have 3 megabit per second DSL, due to being just close enough to Bellsouth’s DSL box on Cat Creek Road, but most of Quarterman Road can’t get DSL due to distance. There are some other land-line possibilties, involving cables in the ground or wires on poles.

Then there are wireless possibilities, including EVDO, available from Verizon, with 750 kilobit per second (0.75 Mbps) wide area access from cell phone towers.

Verizon’s towers could also be used for WIFI antennas, for up to 8 Mbps Internet access, over a wide scale.

Then there’s metropolitan-area Internet. Chattanooga has the fastest such network, with 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps). But hundreds of communities around the country have such networks, including (continued after the video)…

Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

…Lafayette, Louisiana, Bowling Green, Kentucky, Lagrange, Georgia, and Thomasville, Georgia. They use it for public safety, education (Wiregrass Tech, VSU), and

It attracts new industry. If you want knowledge-based industry, they’re going to be expecting Internet access not just at work, but at home, whereever they live.

Other uses include Continue reading →