Mosaic Solar Crowdsourcing...Merging Investing and Energy

If you have never heard of Oakland, Ca. based Mosaic Solar, keep an eye out - they may be changing the way investors, individuals, small business and energy companies come together.

Mosaic is a crowdsourcing platform that allows individuals to invest in single solar panel projects on places like schools, churches, retirement homes, etc. The business requests the project be put on the Mosaic site and the cost is listed. Mosaic investors then can contribute from $25 minimums on up to as much as they would like at a return around 4.5% for most projects. The payout can be in 10-20 year terms and the business getting the solar can repay early if they choose.

This is an alternative to renting the solar panels from the solar companies like SolarCity which is a small upfront investment and then you rent the panels from the company. SolarCity reaps the benefits if and when your panels return enough energy to the grid to get a rebate. The consumer takes the lower energy bill and has stability against rising energy rates from the big utilities.

In Mosaic's case, the business is actually purchasing the solar panels. If you were to do this on the open market systems like this could cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is prohibitively expensive to most small businesses and there are relatively few companies that will do a loan or financing option. With the Mosaic route, you crowdsource the funds, get the panels immediately, and pay back a constant payment much like a mortgage for the life of the loan. Investors get steady cash returns, the business gets panels that drastically lower or eliminate their energy costs, the environment is saved one panel at a time as we burn less and less coal and natural gas producing our power.

So, does anybody want to do this?!?

Mosaic had fully funded their first offered crowdsourcing project in ten minutes. Most projects offered in their first year in California were fully funded within 6 days. It seems that investors LIKE having options to invest their money in sustainable environmentally friendly ways. This is a way to have a direct impact with as little as $25 invested and very low risk.

I love the idea. I hope it takes off and we can use this same system to fund other eco-friendly projects. Crowdsourcing is the way of the future and smart entrepreneurs are finding ways to tap into those funds for positive, game changing ways.

Click HERE to check out Mosaic's website and see if there is a project that is near and dear to heart or even on your street!

Cheers

TJ Franco
  

Regulating our Underground Aquifers

The year is 1886, the following important things happened:

• Jan 1 - The 1st ever Tournament of Roses is held in Pasadena, CA
• May 8 - The 1st ever Coca-Cola is sold in Atlanta, GA --- containing trace amounts of cocaine.
• Sept 4 - Apache Leader Geronimo surrenders to US troops in AZ, ending the last US-Indian War

On April 26th, 1886, the California Supreme Court decided the case of Lux v Haggin and made the last major decision on water rights in California. I don't know about you, but I think a few things have changed in CA in the last 125 years or so.

The court found that Riparian Rights to water held priority but that Appropriative Rights were secondary and binding. What the hell does that mean??

REALLY BASIC explanation - Riparian Rights says that if your land has water ON it, you get to use is how you want. Appropriation Rights say that the, "First in Time is the First in Right," basically stating that if called it first, you get. Like playing shotgun for the front seat of a car on a long road trip, except this has to do with the very lifeblood of our state and our people - water.

To be clear, all of this case law only applied to surface water and groundwater that was percolating up to the surface. There was NOTHING said about groundwater in underground aquifers. Meaning since the beginning of CA, if you owned land that had groundwater a couple hundred feet down, it belonged to you. Much like mineral rights, rights to any water contained under your land was yours to do with as you pleased as long as the usage was for Beneficial Purposes and by Reasonable Method of Use. Meaning farmers could use the water to grow their crops, but some asshole couldn't dig a well and use groundwater to spray into the air 24/7/365 just so he could run under it sometimes.

This probably wouldn't fly either.

Why are we talking about this?

Gov. Jerry Brown this week signed legislation for the first time in CA history giving government oversight and regulation to the use of groundwater. Making good use of our current horrendous drought that I have already well documented here and here, Gov Brown pushed Sacramento legislators to get in the game... and they have. The regulations come in 3 bills. The first demands local governmental agencies to develop a groundwater management plan. The second puts forth a timeline that the state can step in if the local regulators aren't doing their job to put their plans into action. The third plays to farmers, and postpones actions by the state in places where surface water has been depleted by groundwater pumping.

It should be noted that California is the LAST Western State with a "pump as you please" look at groundwater rights. Other Western states have, for years, regulated ground water pumping as they see groundwater as a scarce and valuable resource. In California, farmers have been in a costly race to dig the deepest wells to grab up all the available water - costing millions in depleted aquifers, destroyed roads and canals.

Many experts expect protracted legal battles challenging the new regulations even though insiders believe the new regulations may not take effect for close to a decade. The newly signed legislation gives local planners two years to submit their plans and five years after that to implement the plan. The state will be able to enforce the plans by metering water and issuing fines for noncooperation.

Gov Brown is taking advantage of everything he possibly can surrounding his enormous popularity and this drought. He is using it to push through his plan to dig gigantic tunnels under the Sacramento Delta to bring water to thirsty Angelenos and the rest of SoCal faster, he is trying to bully the courts into keeping our prisons massively overcrowded (more to come on that topic shortly), and he continues to push his bullet train with all its enormous challenges.

When the Governor is a shoe in for another term, when one party controls both houses of our State Congress, things get passed! Look on this as a positive or a negative, but things get passed!

Let me know what you think. I would love to revisit this in a few years and see where all these planners have gone and what the results look like... especially after a nice rain storm.

Cheers

TJ Franco

PS - At least plans like these will never cut the mustard with the new regulations.

LAX People Mover... a Reality?

In 2008, 68% of Los Angeles County voters approved a half cent sales tax increase via Measure R slated for transit infrastructure projects. This is one of a dozen of them...

When LAX was built in 1960, apparently no one thought to put a public transit system in place to take riders from the surrounding buses, directly in to LAX. Enter the LAX People Mover. Mayor Eric Garcetti is quoted as saying," I think it will fix a historic mistake of our past." Hopefully it will! Let's discuss.

Ok, so the funding has been stated. We all voted on it. Or at least the 12% of Los Angeles County residents that vote on this sort of thing voted on it, and passed it. So we have the dough.

How are we going to get there? The Metro Green Line, or Crenshaw Line, is currently under construction at a cost of approximately $330M. The station for the LAX people mover would be added to this expansion of the line and it would be located at Aviation & 96th. Currently the Green Line is 1.5 miles short of LAX and there is a shuttle bus that you have to catch to get into the airport. That is brutal and complete nonsense.

The people mover, which would be built by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) which runs LAX, would run on an elevated guideway, above traffic, directly to the airport. Detailed finalized plans for how many stops inside the LAX horseshoe are due in December 2014 but it is somewhere between 2-5 stops for the LAX terminals. LAWA would be responsible for covering the costs of the people mover itself, for all the construction, and for maintaining it. It could look something like this:

CONRAC refers to the consolidated Rent-a-Car Center

Artist Rendering of the People Mover Station

LA Metro is on the hook for the station (where our Measure R dollars go). Mayor Garcetti and others in City Government have asked that the Aviation/96th Station be state of the art and really worthy of the costs associated with the project. They want a fully encolsed station including: retail and convenience shops, WiFi, airline information boards, private vehicle drop off and taxi stands, ATM's, and even possibly currency exchange and luggage check in. All of this in LEED Silver Certified construction to make sure there is minimal environmental impact and that it is sustainably built.

Proposed dates for completion of construction at this point are, 2019 for the completion of the Aviation/96th Station, and 2020-2022 for the people mover to be completed and operational.

Is it worth it?

By 2022, LAWA estimates that 57% of travelers will arrive at LAX via private car, 33% by taxi, limo or shuttle, 8% by Flyaway, and 1-2% via buses and rail. Is is worth upwards of $1B to cater to 1-2% of all travelers at LAX? According to LAWA there were 66.6 million passengers that went through LAX in 2013. That means if that number doesn't change, a ridership of 660,000 - 1,330,000 for the people mover. Taking a million cars out of LAX every year seems pretty worth it to me!

So, in less than a decade we should correct a 60's era wrong. Garcetti likes it, do you?

Cheers,

TJ

PS - All of this movement to the airport is coupled with the MUCH NEEDED updates that are happening to the terminals themselves. Last year LAWA completed a $2.1 Billion update to the Tom Bradley International Terminal, LAX's busiest and most profitable terminal. Currently underway are updates as follows:
Terminal 1 - $508,000,000 - Southwest
Terminal 2 - $300,000,000
Terminal 3 - already partially done by Virgin America and Virgin Australia
Terminal 5 - $250,000,000 - Delta
Terminal 6 - Alaska has updated its part and United is in the process of updating its section
Terminals 7-8 - $400,000,000 - United

LAX is (hopefully) getting better and more efficient!

Urban TxT - I can Only Imagine...

Imagine the possibility if we could get inner city kids, the ones we all know have the toughest road to success and to get out of the terrible cycle of poverty, to get interested and involved in technology. In developing tech, not just using FB and Instagram for selfies. Imagine the run up if inner city kids starting pouring into technical college to become programmers, computer engineers, software developers, and technological entrepreneurs. Imagine what could be accomplish if the pent up aggression, angst, disparity and frustration of a cycle of poverty were broken and those that had been trapped starting using that potential from Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach. Inner city kids look to rappers and athletes and say," That is the way I am getting out of here." What a minuscule portion of them can actually be elite athletes or make a living selling records. But how many could make a legitimate career out of programming, coding, computing? Life changing things could happen. A resurgence of the true middle class that is all but gone in America today, especially in large cities like Los Angeles.

That dream, that possibility, is being explored by Oscar Menjivar. Born and raised in Watts in South Central Los Angeles, Oscar was given a chance to succeed at an early age, and he took advantage. After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in Information Technology and starting a successful consulting firm, he decided to give back to his community. Oscar is one of the few people that sees potential built up in the inner city, especially here in the lowest income portion of Los Angeles.

With no funding, Oscar started his Technology Summer Program called Urban TxT, Teens Exploring Technology. Originally the would meet at Starbucks or on the campus of USC in range of free WiFi since they had no funding the rent a space. Now a few years on, they rent a small work space they call the "Cube" in South LA.

Oscar and his team of dedicated mentors and teachers encourage the students to develop something person that will help solve a need in their local community. Find a local problem, and find a way technology can solve it. With the credo in mind, the students set out to change everything from safe running paths through unsafe neighborhoods, to apps that match up a students interests with a non-profit that they can team with to complete school mandated community service hours. These are small problems with small solutions, but the value of the education in learning how to find a need and come up with a way to solve it cannot be understated. This is exactly what entrepreneurship is, finding solutions to problems that no one else has come up with yet.

In a world constantly embittered by the shrinking middle class, the lack of resources or the waste of given resources to the most underserved, the government struggles with compromise and leadership, and an ever growing fear that the next generation of Americans will not be as well off as the last... I am glad Oscar has found a niche to help. Found a place where he can get his hands dirty and really watch as he shapes young lives in unexpected ways. I can only imagine the possibilities that are in store if this movement really takes off. If the kids buy into it and more kids start signing up. If we can get a couple great success stories that become a catalyst for change. I love Los Anegeles, and if we can get our most impoverished communities to start utilizing tools being given them while having the rest of the tech world really embrace and empower this movement, we are in for a bright future in the Southland. I can only imagine...

Cheers

TJ Franco

To see Oscar explain his story in his own words... watch this TEDx talk.

Much Ado about Water

Pick up ANYTHING written about California these days, and inevitably something will be mentioned about the drought and the current crisis of water in our State.

Make no mistake, we brought this on ourselves! We in Southern California have grown a vast empire of citizens in a barren desert. Those farmers mid-state who love to blame all our water issues on the Real Lawns of LA are just as much to blame, planting water thirsty crops in an area that does not have the annual average precipitation to sustain them.

Breaking News - we have no water. So what are we going to do about it?

I previously posted here and here about the major initiatives California is trying to push through in this time of vast uneasiness about the future of water in our state. CA Assemblyman Roger Dickinson was recently quoted by the LA Times saying," This falls under the category of: Never let a crisis go to waste." We are finally getting major agricultural interests together with Sacramento policymakers, local utilities, and environmentalists to push through, or at the VERY LEAST negotiate and brainstorm ideas that can improve our water situation.

One topic on the table today is groundwater management and regulation. Since the Gold Rush days of California, groundwater has been a right of the property owner. This means big agricultural interests mid-state can dig wells on their acres of farmland and use it to their desire to supplement the surface water they are getting from the aqueduct and, of course, rain. This becomes a problem when a drought such as this comes along and groundwater becomes the major source of fresh water for people. We have done a horrendous job at recapturing rain water for use. We have so many non-permeable surfaces in SoCal that the water goes into the gutter and out to sea, never to be used by our population or retained back into our groundwater reserves. Bad news!

Ok, local focus. What can we do? Obviously the homeowner's among us can cut back on landscape water. We can do all the little normal things that really do add up - turn the water off while brushing your teeth and shaving, take shorter showers, load the dishwasher and clothes washer to max fill before cycling, install low flow or dual flush toilets for maximum efficiency.

Ok, a step further. Install gutters if you don't have them, and make sure the downspouts end in rain barrels or rain gardens where the water is either used by you later in your garden or can be soaked back into the earth replenishing our groundwater supplies. If the water goes to the gutter, it is lost forever.

Take out the grass. It is as simple as that. Personally I LOVE the look of a green lawn but I cannot stomach the sight of my sprinklers on anymore. It literally hurts to watch. So I made a compromise with myself, I will replace my backyard with natural landscaping and permeable surfaces and use the rain barrels to collect the water to use in the front yard. Obviously I won't collect enough to water the lawn, but it should be enough to water the local plants I have used around the edges, and those small compromises (which in my case should cut back approx 60% of my total water usage and more than 85% of my outdoor water usage) made by all of us WILL have an impact. I am going with all permeable stone and surface area in the replacement backyard so that I can capture as much of our minuscule rainfall as possible.

Not actual photos of my yard, but aren't they pretty?!? You get the idea...

People of Los Angeles and California in general, we are looking at another warm dry winter. Great for tourism, TERRIBLE for us residents who will live here through the worst drought our state has seen in recorded history. We all need to pitch in, we all need to help. LADWP announced they are going to start warning and then fining water wasters $500/citation for watering on non-designated days, for washing your car in your driveway, for having sprinklers that point to the street instead of planters, and any other wasteful uses of water. This is serious stuff and we all need to do our part.

Would love your ideas and your thoughts on the best way to conserve, store, save, and recycle water in this time of need!

Cheers

TJ Franco

Tesla Gigafactory... the Future of the Battery

The Tesla Gigafactory, have you heard of it? If you haven't, odds are by the end of this week, you will!

Tesla CEO and genius, Elon Musk, is at it again - this time aiming to revolutionize the energy utility sector of this country and possibly the world. Musk has, for years, been turning industries on their heads. 

As creator of PayPal (where he earned his fortune) he changed the way online buying and selling was done. No longer needed were credit cards or ACH transfers, this was a fast, easy, safe way to transfer money online for goods purchased initially on eBay and now essentially everywhere on the internet.

He also turned his sights on the newly privatized space industry. As NASA closed its doors, someone needed to fill the gap. Musk and SpaceX have stepped up nicely. After years of development and testing, SpaceX recently became the first private space company to successfully dock with the International Space Station. They will be delivering supplies and tools to the ISS while the Russians continue to use their rockets to transport the astronauts. 

So after Musk has transformed Outer Space and CyberSpace,  he is turning his attentions to... Battery Space? Enter the Gigafactory. A joint venture spearheaded by Musk and Tesla Motors, his electric car company, Tesla Gigafactory will look to revolutionize the Lithium-Ion battery space globally. Gigafactory is reportedly looking to produce upwards of 30 gigawatts of batteries per year when fully operational. Those batteries would be used to power all of Tesla's motor vehicles along with a new product line aimed at Residential (and soon to be small commercial) properties for storage of Solar Power. Once up and running, and assuming they actually achieve the 30 gigawatts per year worth of batteries they claim they can produce, according to Musk,“We are talking about something that is comparable to all of the lithium-ion battery production in the world in one factory."

So how does this change everything? Utility companies around the world battle spikes in power usage, most often in evening between 4-7pm when people arrive home from work and put all of their systems to work. That also happens to be when the sun is going down and the solar panels on the roofs of these homes are no longer producing energy. Power produced during the day had been fed back into the grid, but now the house is drawing all the power and then some back. With this surge in usage, the systems of the power companies are always strained. Enter the Tesla Home Battery (my name, not theirs). With a Home Battery connected to your solar panels, it would charge itself with all the power the panels draw in throughout the day and store that energy until it is needed in the evening. Homes would still be connected to the grid for excess power needs but the batteries could be programmed to use all their power during the most expensive time periods effectively bringing down the drain from utilities and also ensuring any power taken from the grid is purchased at the lowest price point.

Long term, if Musk's predictions are correct, the Gigafactory and the 2-3 more he intends to build in the US will effectively dive bomb the price of Lithium-Ion batteries and make the Residential Home Battery so effective, people could use them to collect enough solar energy to completely run their home and also store power in case of emergency black outs, as the power would come from the panels on the roof, not from a main grid system that could fail and go offline.

Currently, the Gigafactory's location is TBD. But people in the know, people following developments closely, have predicted the announcement will come this Thursday, July, 31st, as Tesla announces its earnings to Wall Street. There has been rumor that this ground breaking in Reno is the first site that has been chosen as Gigafactory 1. There are also plans being put together for a location in Stockton, Ca and Phoenix, Az. Musk has said that he would go as far as breaking ground on up to 3 locations in order to take precautions against any local or construction problems at any one site.

Gigafactory will also produce all its own power onsite with newly built solar panels & wind turbines. A Net Zero factory.

I am going to revisit this topic after Thursday's announcements, if any. But I think this is going to be an ongoing fascinating development in our region, in our country and in our world as we see a massive shift from fossil fuels to a cleaner future of energy production.

Cheers

TJ

Solar Farms, harnessing our most powerful and abundant natural resource

Here in the lovely Southwest United States there is one thing we have an abundance of - sunshine. While we are already leading the nation in utilizing Solar Power, there is still so much we can do.

Recently I learned of a government initiative in Singapore, an entire country smaller than New York City. With a population of almost 5.5 million people on a small set of islands in SE Asia, space is at a premium and like everywhere else, its residents need power. In order to provide this power, the government of Singapore is looking toward a new technology - floating solar fields.

There is technology that has been developed in Southern France and is currently being tested that would allow for large solar farms to be constructed and placed in reservoirs and other fresh water areas inlets to provide power for nearby municipalities. This has benefits both for the power and water elements. The Solar panels will be able to move thereby always having optimal positioning for solar collection. The panels as well as the cables carrying the collected power will be kept cool by the water, thereby losing minimal power to thermal loss. Also for future adaptations of this solar array, the platforms themselves could be modified to collect wave current power if the fields were put into the ocean or protected bays.

For the water, the solar panels protect the surface of the water from the sun. This vastly lowers water loss to evaporation which will be crucial moving forward specifically here in the arid SW. What little water we do get, we cannot afford to lose to those 100 degree afternoons throughout our endless summers.

Imagine, if you will, something like what is pictured below floating around a couple of coves in Lake Mead, Lake Powell, the LA Reservoir, and countless other water collection facilities in SW. Image the power that could be pulled in year round for our cities in Inland CA, AZ, NV.

Creative solutions like these need to be presented to our newly minted DWP Board, Mayor Garcetti, Gov Brown and all the other officials of our great state that are constantly looking for ways to bring power to our Green State without burning more fossil fuels. We have the solar technology, why not put it to work??

Thanks for listening - Email, Tweet, Facebook message your local Energy/Water supplier and tell them we are in need and there are solutions out there yet to be explored.

Cheers

TJ