New Video– Solar Roadways: The Prototype

Lots to share in this update…

• Exclusive New YERT Video– Solar Roadways: The Prototype
• YERT Featured Tomorrow at Dutch Environmental Film Festival
• Ben Performs in “4 1/2 Hours: Across the Stones of Fire” in New York City
• YERT to Interview Janine Benyus in Bar Harbor, Maine (and Mark needs a place to stay!)

Solar Roadways: The Prototype
A few months back we heard that Scott Brusaw was busy building a prototype of his solar roads, and we just had to see it for ourselves– so we visited him in Idaho to give you an exclusive sneak peek.

For the first time ever on video, check out Solar Roadways: The Prototype

While building the prototype, Scott quickly realized several opportunities for improvements to the design, and he discusses a few of them in the video. Our favorite is to laminate glass panes together to effectively “sandwich” the solar panels and LEDs inside the road surface. This adds both strength, solar panel surface area, and improved visibility to the design. Scott also has plans to set the glass panels on a sturdy mixture that includes plastic garbage pulled from the oceans. Quite an upgrade from traditional asphalt– power-generating glass roads that use up garbage from the ocean!

This video also features Dr. Carlo Pantano, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Director of the Materials Research Institute at Penn State University. Finally, we also meet Scott’s wife and co-founder of Solar Roadways, Julie Brusaw.

YERT Featured Tomorrow at Dutch Environmental Film Festival
Ben has assembled a fresh collection of YERT shorts and chapters from our feature film for screening on opening night (June 3) at the Dutch Environmental Film Festival in Amsterdam. This isn’t the final YERT film, but it is a very significant “walk” in the “crawl, walk, run” path to film completion. If you have friends in Amsterdam, tell them to swing on by for a great time! We’ll be sitting in good company, as the festival will also be featuring Josh Dorfman a.k.a. “The Lazy Environmentalist,” “Carbon Nation,” “No Impact Man,” “Dive!,” and “Sweet Crude,” to name a few familiar TV and film faces.

Ben Performs in “4 1/2 Hours: Across the Stones of Fire” in New York City
Ben is visiting his pre-YERT hometown of NYC for all sorts of excitement. First, he is performing with Jeff Biggers (HuffPo blogger/author) and Stephanie Pitello in “4 1/2 Hours: Across the Stones of Fire,” an original multimedia play about mountaintop removal mining. The show opens on Friday, June 4 at 9pm and goes for a week. Find more information here. Ben is also hunting for connections to help get the YERT film out into the world when the time is right. And if you’re in the mood for a YERT presentation while he’s in town, he’s game– particularly if you’re a college or high school. Send him a note at ben@yert.com to discuss details!

YERT to Interview Janine Benyus in Bar Harbor, Maine (and Mark needs a place to stay!)
That’s right, we’ll be interviewing internationally acclaimed biomimicry guru Janine Benyus for the YERT feature film. To save every penny, Mark is looking for a free place to stay in that town. If you have a friend up there, he’ll need floor space for two on the evening of 6/15 and 6/16. Thanks for helping out!

That’s all for today– thanks for reading!

Peace,
Mark, Ben, and Julie
team@yert.com

This entry was posted on June 2, 2010 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Events, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.