photo credit: David Boyle

Over the past year, my family and I have made a game of finding renewable energy projects around town.  From solar panels to wind turbines, we’re becoming expert greenspotters!  In our relatively small city of 80,000 people, Bend Oregon sports a great percentage of distributed generation projects. They are found on schools and traffic signals, businesses and historic homes. Greenspotting© can keep you occupied for hours here.

The sport of Greenspotting© does not require athletic prowess.  Nor do you need a degree in engineering or technology.  All you need is an eye for the various forms of alternative energy that are sprouting up all over the place.  An appreciation for the benefits of a reduced carbon footprint can’t hurt, either!  Heck, we even engaged in greenspotting when we went on vacation last year.

Greenspotting in Hawaii last fall

Try this simple exercise this week.  See if you can find 5 distributed generation projects in a 7-day period.  You can even cheat a bit and include news stories you read (not including this post).

Since I started writing about renewable energy issues a year ago, I have been surprised at the number of clean, green developments that are in my corner of the world.  One you open up your eyes a bit, you may be surprised.  Get your kids, friends or colleagues in on the challenge, as well!

We would like to draw on the experiences of our Build Baby Build Greenspotters©.  Help us put together a map of all the unsung renewable energy projects in existence around the U.S.  Know of another one that is proposed and going in?   Even better.  We don’t want to miss a single solar panel or turbine.  Distributed generation projects may be relatively small and discrete compared to the bigger power plants with which you may be most familiar.  When you add them all together, they can make a significant difference with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change.

Come on Greenspotters©!  You can contact us by emailing contact@buildbabybuild.net, adding to our residential map below, or the Commercial/Retail map or the Municipal/Town Map.

Let’s take this movement to the next level.  By showing and telling about the myriad of renewable energy developments that can be found all over the world, we can inspire their continued progress.  Are you with us?

Below is a map of homes throughout the country that are generating thier own electricity using renewable energy. To add your home to the map:

1) Search or zoom in to your address
2) Click on the pink Add Marker tool, or click over the exact location of your house (please do not add lines, polygons, circles, or squares);
3) Use the black arrow tool to click on your entry and please add detailed descriptions including output, wind, solar, etc. and hit submit. If you want to add color please use yellow for solar, blue for wind, green for geothermal, aqua for hydro, and white for other.
4) When you are done please zoom back out to the US-wide view and be sure to Save.

Sample Marker:
6.0 kw PV, Solar pool heat
Leominster, 212 Granite St, MA
Zip code 01453-2543
Installed by Moss Hollow, LLC
Lunenburg, MA 01462

If you are an installer and have a list of homes where you have installed renewable energy you can use the Data Import buttons on the bottom right of the map above.

‘Greenspotting’ & ‘Greenspotter’ © 2009 All rights reserved.

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Related posts:

1. How to Become a Greenspotter