**FIRST EMAIL**/Going Green at the FIRST Robotics Conference in Atlanta

[Rich Olivera]

Originally Posted by RoboTIP

I missed Dan's presentation in Atlanta, and so far I can find nothing that has been posted. Does anyone have any information they are willing to share? Perhaps contact information for Dan?

I attended this meeting. Here is what I got out of it:
The goal of this conference was to introduce a method of fund raising that also increases awareness of energy expenditure in local firms and businesses. The idea is as follows. Many utility companies offer a free energy audit service. Auditors survey the facilities of local businesses and provide constructive feedback. This feedback would include suggestions for saving energy. Possible suggestions could be replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent light bulbs, installing socket units which shut down vending machines at hours when no one is in the building, or closing blinds (whether it be manually or automatically) at certain hours of the day. A cost benefit analysis is provided reporting the yearly savings. For a decent sized facility, the yearly savings would be tens of thousands of dollars.
The problem is that very few out there know these services exist or make use of them. This is where FIRST comes in. The program outlined in this conference seeks to mobilize the FIRST community to proactively seek out auditing opportunities, to effectively carry out these audits, and to request that half of the first year savings be donated to a FIRST team.
Of course, logistics were still being discussed in the meeting. They still need to devise a way to train auditors. There was discussion about collaborating with local power companies. Experience in energy auditing was another issue. For this, there was also talk about starting out in school districts and sponsor-run facilities. Success stories were also shared at this meeting. Apparently, some have already had some success auditing despite limited experience. The impression I got from the meeting is that FIRST hopes capitalize on the teams' enthusiasm and links to their local communities.

Unfortunately, the only contact info I got at this conference, so far, has not yielded any response. If anyone has more info, I would also like to hear more.

[Eric O]

That is interesting, but sounds logistically intense. I see the fundraising coming from the other side of the business. Why not connect with those doing the auditing, and have them recommend the people/businesses they audited buy light bulbs, etc from your team. So, you would go around promoting the audit and then get the $$ on the sales side. If the electric company is going to do the audit work for free why would the team do it?

I had the general idea when buying light bulbs for $1 because they were subsidized. I am sure someone would buy the energy efficient bulbs for $2. Sending the kids door to door with information about being energy efficient and then selling the bulbs would be an easy sell.

I have not had a chance to investigate the feasibility or legality of either of these ideas, but I thought I would share.

-Eric

[Kim Masi]

Right now the program is in beta-test mode, and there are a handful of teams (ourselves included) who promised to perform these energy audits and give feedback to FIRST by the fall. Does anyone out there know of any other teams in the northeast that are participating? Steve Cremer told me there were a bunch, but didn't give me specifics. Our team is looking for more ideas to share and collaborate with, so if you are interested, please let me know.

Right now our team is trying to get in contact with companies who might be interested in the audits. If we can't actually turn this into a fund raising opportunity, then we will still be audition our schools (High schools and Northeastern) to teach kids and the community about the importance of saving energy.