Once again Bruce Agnew and Steve Marshall put on a great conference and drew in some of the best regional examples of plug in hybrids and electric cars. The Energyrushtv crew was on the scene working Dr. Andrew Frank as we added elements to the soon to be launched series Professor Plug In. We were lucky enough to meet up with Dave Moore, Eric Leonhart, Felix Kramer, and Rob Bernard the Chief Sustainability officer of Microsoft.

Felix Kramer somehow was able to put this conference together due to the interest of Dr. Andrew Grove the founder of Intel. Wanting to make a big deal of the opportunity EnergyRushTV was out in force to start what will be an ongoing series: Professor Plug In. A few days before we had tried out this new format with Dr. Frank at the Intersolar North America conference. We were playing with the new format when we met Chris Paine, the director of the film, Who Killed the Electric Car. Dr. Frank and Chris met and then we filmed an intro to our new series with Chris.

Once we knew we liked this short video format we started working on it in San Jose. There were so many opportunities and we videotaped segments in front of booths including PG&E, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and Plug In America where “Professor Plug-In” was able to interview the President of Plug In America, Linda Nichols.

Later Dr. Frank was able to show Andy Grove Trinity, the PHEV flex fuel car that he has been working on. TK and Dr. Frank gave Eva and Andy Grove a test drive and they were surprised at the power this car had. Lucky for our audience that EnergyRushTV had more multiple camera to catch the action. The former governor of Washington Gary Locke and Kyle Wang of Global Energy Exchange also traveled to San Jose to be there.

Dr. Andrew Frank traveled to the Google.Org Plug In Conference co-sponsored by the Brookings Institute held in Washington DC June 10-11th in Washington DC. For EnergyRush TV this was a must see event! Being there was the perfect opportunity to kick off our new series “On the Road with Dr. Frank.” Hundreds of people from all over the country converged to help electrify transportation. Immediately Dr Frank went to work and EnergyRushTV was recording interviews with Dan Reicher of Google.Org, Congressman Jay Inslee, Jack Hidary of SMAART Transportation, Tom Kuhn of the Edison Institute, Jack Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Motors, Jim Woolsey, Vijay Variswaetharan. It was an amazing couple of days and Alec Proudfoot of Google.Org’s Recharge It was complemented for the effort. Hoping to get some exterior shots Dr. Frank and our crew went to get some shots in front of the US Dept of Energy and the Capital Bldg. Oops- no permits and immediately armed federal police were asking us to leave without any footage.

EnergyRushTV was invited to document the SMARTT Challenge (Students Making Advancements in Renewable Transportation Technology on the campus of North Carolina State University. We flew all day from the West Coast and when we got to the hotel the parking lot was full of electric cars. Just below our 2nd story room was a Porsche that was connected to an extension cord. When we arrived the next morning there were over a dozen cars and trucks that were all converted to electric by high school students! EnergyRushTV has been too many EV and PHEV events but we had never seen an event like this. We interviewed and documented these amazing cars and the students behind them. Behind this annual event are Dr. Pam Carpenter and Jennifer Whitley who have been promoting this event. This was not just a beauty contest but a competition related to design, range, autocross, trouble shooting, oral presentations, and web design. But there was also another dimension to this and that was a solar science fair competition. Hundreds of students working in teams build solar powered models that had to carry a payload. We had two cameras on this and we were running to keep up with the action.

The SMARRT Challenge is an annual event sponsored by Progress Energy and next year there will be a plug in hybrid for high school students. We loved this event and the people. As one southern gentleman looked at all these cars and trucks he was bemused and rhetorically asked us “if these high school students can do this how come the car companies can’t do it?”

Energy Rush TV is usually on the road but the Power Up Conference was in our own backyard. What a blessing it was to be with the stars of the electrification of transportation movement. The energy Rush TV staff doubled as taxi cabs and picked up Felix Kramer of Cal Cars.org, Ewan Pritchard of Advanced Energy, and Dr. Andrew Frank. There was so many great speakers at this event including John Clark of V2Green, Michael Kintner-Myer of the NorthWest Energy Labs, Jim White of the Chelan county PUD and of course the master of ceremonies Ron Johnson-Rodriquez

In the spring of 2007, the Energy Rush TV traveling video crew descending on the iconic headquarters of Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. The reason for our visit was the Cascadia Conference at Microsoft’s corporate conference center.

A sizable display of alternative vehicles was lined up outside the facility, and an impressive group of speakers was scheduled to enlighten the gathered masses. Our team was able to interview a number of interesting attendees, some for the first – but certainly not last – time.

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When you think of a 68,000-seat football stadium, the first thing you think of is … well, football. But the fall of 2007 saw Qwest Field, home of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, become the site of a unique event called “Clean Vehicles Now!” And the Energy Rush TV crew was there.

In fact, the organizers of the event, King County, Washington, asked us to help them scout the location in preparation for the big day. We got a behind-the-scenes look at one of the nation’s most impressive sports venues. When the “Clean Vehicles Now!” show happened, Energy Rush TV had an information booth placed right next to the registration tables.

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Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington is remarkable for a lot of reasons. One of them is the Vehicle Research Institute. Automobile magazine said of the VRI that it’s “very possibly the best school in the country for total car design.” That was reason enough for the Energy Rush TV team to travel to this campus located just south of the Canadian border, and that’s exactly what we did last summer.

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Here at EnergyRushTV, we’ve been talking off and on to the management of Imperium Renewables for well over a year. Imperium is a national leader in the production of biodiesel fuels, and construction of their new refinery in Grays Harbor near the coast of Washington state had been underway for some time.

When the time came for the official grand opening event at the new refinery, naturally our team had to be there. On August 15, 2007 we traveled to the event which was attended by U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, U.S. Representative Norm Dicks, as well as representatives of Governor Chris Gregoire, the Port of Grays Harbor, and the National Biodiesel Board. Hundreds of people came from as far away as the East Coast to attend the kickoff event, and we were there to shoot it all on High Definition video.

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The EnergyRushTV team had been doing some research about the “Challenge X” competition. It didn’t take us long to figure out that we needed to take an up close and personal look at this fascinating event. So last autumn, we did a cross-country tour which started out in Northern California and ended up in Detroit, Michigan.

We’ve been covering the activities of the engineering school at the University of California, Davis for the past couple of years. The man in charge of their alternative vehicle research program is Dr. Andrew Frank, Professor of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. We’ve met with and interviewed Dr. Frank all over the country, but this time we were interested in the vehicle his team of students was prepping for the Challenge X.

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