I'm pretty sure the MREA fair is the largest of its kind in the midwest. Its a pretty big deal. Also, JB is apparently originally from Wisconsin. It was pretty cool to hear his story. Hes just a car / EV nerd like us here at Ecomodder. He talked about how he did a
DIY EV conversion of an older Porsche with lead acid batteries when he was in college. Hah, I found it on EValbum. It looks like he built is own controller too.
My favorite thing was just hanging out and talking with people. They have so many cool ideas of things they want to do. Renewable energy, while it is somewhat developed, is still so open to new ideas, products, and things that are really interesting to me. For example, they had outdoor wood burning boilers, rocket stoves, masonary stoves, little foldable stoves for camping / hiking (with secondary air injection for clean & efficient burning), and that is just a few of the stove they had! Almost all of these are small companies, so you get to talk with the owner and designer of the product which is so much fun. There is a lot of passion in those people as they really believe in what they do, and they also really enjoy it. I also got to talk with a bunch of the owners of EVs which is always interesting. Its really cool when someone already knows about Ecomodder (cause I had to wear my EM t-shirt
), and there were a few. The guy with the bicycle trailer deal knew about Ecomodder and immediately asked about how much eliminating the alternator was good for mileage wise.