inhabitat.com — The Drake Landing Solar Community is the first solar powered community of North America. Located in the town of Okotoks, Alberta, Canada, the project sets a wonderful example of how every household can lead a sustainable lifestyle.
Jul 24, 2008 View in Crawl 4
thestrongropeJul 25, 2008
Roger,That is my point about rethinking the whole damn thing. They obviously didn't worry about the city of Winnepeg (I have never been there and cant comment first hand) since you have to travel out of the city limits to do your shopping. Since you have to go out to the suburbs to do you main business maybe they should consider giving you some better services in the metropolitan area. I don't know if putting a solar development is going to alleviate the problems that you have expressed. I think there needs to be a much larger shift in the way we do things. just my opinion of course.
m0lariaJul 25, 2008
Your car has a battery in it. Guess it isn't a gas powered vehicle.
kingcamJul 25, 2008
Like what exactly?
moun10addictJul 25, 2008
Great idea, but I hope other neighborhoods like this in the future have a little more breathing room. I prefer to have to go outside in order to talk with my next door neighbor.
obliviousfoolJul 26, 2008
Right. I wonder what these houses use for insulation. I wonder what kind of appliances they have. If you are thinking about putting solar cells on your roof, I can save you some money. Replace your refrigerator with a Sun Frost refrigerator. Replace your water heater with a few tankless water heaters. There you go. Now when you do get around to putting those solar cells up there, you won't be using them to pump energy into a broken and wasteful system. See, the problem is that if you retro-fit only one element, all the other elements are still wasteful. I appreciate the effort of these people, but ...they started from scratch and this was the best they could come up with?I mean, this system is just for heating and cooling. If these were earth-bermed structures, 90% of that cost would just be gone right from the start. It would be eliminated. You wouldn't need to keep feeding energy into a broken system. That's what I mean. These technologies work much better in concert with one another.
dannystapleJul 26, 2008
While this chap is misinformed, I do not think I would have dug him down. To be fair, be it saving a lot of power in one place, or a little somewhere else, the fact that it has happened at all, the fact that some developer took the plunge and made it happen is great. I do hope it can happen in California, Texas, Arizona and Florida. I also hope it can happen in London too. Either way - its a good start. Well done to the Canadians for it.
3tcpJul 26, 2008
Look at the insolation maps for north america<a class="user" href="http://www.oksolar.com/abctech/images/world_solar_radiation_large.gif">http://www.oksolar.com/abctech/images/world_solar_ ...</a>The parts I mentioned in the USA get more sun than anywhere in canada.
dannystapleJul 26, 2008
Lets re-apply that logic. If eating well was such a good idea, people would do it on their own. Hmm. If giving up smoking was such a good idea... If having a job was such a good idea... If getting an education was such... If not binge drinking was such... (blah blah - you get the picture). The "do it on their own" probably only applies to an educated and resourceful subset of people. A majority do not know, do not understand, and vote for the guy with the most manly chin. It is this point when you realise that it does not matter how good something is, there is a huge majority who just don't get it enough to "do it on their own". Although I may be wrong on this count, I would like to think I am not part of that majority. Are you?
diskmaster23Jul 28, 2008
I don't mean to be an ass...but this was already mentioned a month or so ago.