Demonstrations

Alternatively Fueled Vehicles – Progress Energy is promoting Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) by operating a demonstration fleet of twelve vehicles. Publix has a fleet of more than 170 Toyota Priuses and is developing a 25kW PV array that may be adapted to become a PHEV “fueling” station. TECO is demonstrating natural gas powered Honda Civics. We plan to collaborate with all these and other private sector groups to promote demonstration opportunities for their vehicles. In addition we plan to analyze the performance of the various vehicles and develop outreach materials, such as fact sheets on alternatively fueled vehicles – “What are they?”; “How do they work?”; “Are they for real?” and possibly a “Living Green” video segment on transportation for presentation of PBS and public access stations.

Demonstration houses – Evergreen Demonstration Home, Inc. is a Florida-based media, builder and designer collaborative group interested in constructing state-of-the-art “green” residential buildings for public demonstrations of design, product specification and operational principles. Evergreen relies heavily on product donations from manufacturers. Their goal is to build these homes on Florida’s university campuses; they recently broke ground on their first project on the University of West Florida campus. We plan to collaborate with Evergreen (and similar groups) to specify best design, product specification, construction and management practices for use in construction of their buildings. In addition we plan to develop and maintain editorial control over the supporting educational materials used in the demonstration homes to insure their accuracy. Properly managed, this program could provide Florida with an effective, geographically distributed and coordinated network of hands-on demonstration homes. Close collaboration will be maintained among all state universities that would like to participate.