SOMRAD, changes...

[admin]

To our members:


When we started this forum approximately 8 months ago, it primarily was to fill the void left from another forum and also establish a new direction or focus. This experiment has been largely successful through the efforts of each and everyone that contributes to the various boards of this forum. Without your efforts this place would never have come as far as it has is such a short amount of time.

We chose to expand our focus from the rather narrow view of primarily diesel engine driven generator sets to one of combined heat
and power. We have done a pretty good job or establishing the various boards that cover the different aspects or components needed
to build effective cogeneration units.

As we know some time ago the US EPA banned the import of the engine's we like to use for our projects, this ban has effectively cut off
the supply of new engines leaving those who have them safe and those who want them out of luck.  Whether one buys into or agrees with the EPA on their reasoning, it is hard to argue against the merits of combined heat and power (cogeneration). In my opinion cogeneration not only makes more efficient use of the fuel that is burned, but is more environmentally responsible.

Should we choose to stay on the same course, over time we will slowly fade away because there are no new engines to supply new members for our forum. Clearly there needs to be more thought given to this reality and what alternatives there might be. We either explore all options or we simply sit around and do nothing, complain about the government and the EPA. In my opinion this serves no purpose and will get us no where, we need to open our eyes to the acceptance of reality and learn how to work within the system.

Over the last few months we have been working toward a membership with the national association of combined heat and power group,
this has been a bit of a problem in that we don't quite fit and the membership fee's for our group is a bit expensive. The hope was to have a seat at the table so that our small voice could be heard and maybe get their lobby to help us with an exclusion for our engine's for use in cogeneration.  There was also another program sponsored by the US EPA called the "EPA combined heat and power partnership".

Of the two options the decision was made to partner with the EPA in their partnership program. To do that we needed and decided to form
a research and development arm of our forum. We decided to align it with the microcogen.info forum because it is my belief that there is much that can be learned from both sides and much that can be cross linked and contributed to.  Currently we have been accepted into the
"US EPA combined heat and power partnership" program with the research and development arm of our group.

The group will be known as the "Society of Micro-cogeneration Research and Development" (SOMRAD) and will have its own catagory within our forum. The focus of that group will be on microcogeneration and systems development. The catagory will be read only by those that are not members of SOMRAD, and fully functional to those of that group. The SOMRAD group will be open to anyone wishing to join and willing to work on some aspect of, part of, or complete cogeneration system. Many of our members may wish to join, while others might well be more comfortable with just remaining as/is and just reading that catagory.

We are still working on the SOMRAD catagory, and hope to have it fully functional over the weekend, i would expect its growth to be slow
and our approach will be methodical.

The partnership with the EPA allows us direct access to an assigned liaison within the agency, it is our goal to establish a working relationship
with the liaison so that we might get the most out of the partnership. The EPA requires very little from us, their primary requirment is an annual report of planned systems, those systems under development, and those systems in place, so that they can determine how much
green house gas reduction these systems are responsible for as opposed to typical seperate electrical and heat production. None of our system information is made public, they only use our information for in house analysis. Also either the EPA or partner can elect to dissolve the partnership at anytime for any reason, should either find that the partnership is not a good fit.

There are many more benefits that we will be discussing as time goes along.

All i would ask of the membership is "lets give this a chance and see if we can make it work for us" it is my belief that we have much more to gain and nothing to lose. Many of us are environmentally conscious, and i suspect all of us are concerned with getting the most out of our systems. To that end cogeneration/combined heat and power makes good sense.

Finally i would ask members not to post to the SOMRAD catagories, until we get them fully operational.

thanks to all, and here is to our next chapter

admin

[mobile_bob]

here is the link

http://www.epa.gov/chp/partnership/partners.html



bob g

[mobile_bob]

well it is now official, we have the certificate showing that we are now a recognized member of the EPA partnership

rather the "society of microcogeneration research and development" is a certified member, and by extention
we all are because SOMRAD is a subset of our forum.

in order to cover and provide means down the road for movement or expansion we also own the following domains

SOMRAD-USA.COM
SOMRAD-USA.INFO
SOMRAD-USA.ORG

not knowing what might develop down the road i figured we might want to have control of the name to some extent.

now i gotta get busy with the finishing touches and get the R&D wing done and open for operations

hopefully i can get the bugs worked out yet this week

bob g