Cheap Therapy

With some 43 teams (out of a total field of 60 teams) already in Darwin (including two Western Australian school teams this year,  Leeming (Hammerhead) and Willetton Senior High Schools) things are beginning to hot up for the Panasonic World Solar Challenge 2007.A melting pot (or given Darwin’s weather, sweat lodge) of teams from around the world, this year’s race is the first to run under new speed restrictions in Australia’s Northern Territory. The front-end teams will be limited to 130km/h, which will lead to a reduction in previous race times. Also, a day’s layover in Alice Springs will help the field to stay a bit closer together than in previous races. New car classes also attempt to make vehicles more like production cars, by requiring passengers and the ability to get into/out of the car unaided.This is the 20th Anniversary World Solar Challenge, which shows that people like Hans Tholstrup (now there’s a man who should have a Wikipedia entry!) were thinking that there were more energy efficient ways of doing things for at least that long, before Al Gore, and the Stern Review. If only the world’s governments and businesses had been listening 20 years earlier!

Here are some of the posts from Doug on Leeming Sungroper’s 2005 expedition.

After 25 years the White Cliffs power station in New South Wales has received recognition as an Engineering Heritage site, and will be preserved as such. It provided grid connected power for 6 years. As most White Cliffs houses are underground (quite common in opal mining territory where drilling equipment is commonplace), the houses tend to be very energy efficient.