Driving Innovation

Progressive Automotive X Prize–winner Oliver Kuttner, speaking for the Edison2 team, lauded Lynchburg during the award announcement in Washington D.C.: “If you want to innovate and you have an idea, you must be able to go to someone to realize the idea. Lynchburg was a town where I could go half a mile up the street, talk to someone…and get it done.”

Time magazine considered it one of “The 50 Best Inventions of 2010.” Discover’s special “Year in Science” issue ranked it No. 42 among the magazine’s top 100 stories. Popular Mechanics put it on the cover. But perhaps the best coverage is a YouTube outtake showing PBS reporter Judy Woodruff using her fingertip to glide Edison2’s Very Light Car across a hardwood floor in Oliver Kuttner’s Lynchburg workshop.

Kuttner and his crew of elite racecar engineers chose the name Edison2 early in the process, expecting to build an electric or hybrid car. That idea went by the wayside when they did the math and eliminated heavy batteries to improve efficiency.

As things turned out, the team manufactured a four-passenger vehicle that gets more than 100 miles per gallon out of an internal combustion engine running on an ethanol-gasoline blend. Kuttner likes to point out that, ironically, his conventionally powered Very Light Car proved to be the cleanest vehicle in the competition, consistently registering lower CO2 emissions than its electric rivals.

The aerodynamic vehicle is extremely light. The X Prize– winning version officially weighed 840 pounds, including 99 pounds of ballast added to account for any absent features like airbags and to compensate for the weight of the actual driver. (The competition rulebook specified that the person sitting behind the wheel could not weigh less than 200 pounds.)

The Very Light Car took home the $5 million prize in the “mainstream” category. (Winners in the alternative twopassenger “tandem” and “side-by-side” competitions won $2.5 million apiece.) Executing the winning design required analyzing and reimagining every component of the vehicle, a process made easier with local suppliers like Brown Machine Works, Accutech Fabrication, GHK Auto Paint Supply, and Valley Fasteners standing at the ready.

As the Edison2 team moves into the next phase, developing a safe, consumer-friendly, “fuel agnostic” production model, they plan to remain in Central Virginia and maintain their relationships with area partners.

Seeing the Light at IWT

We’ve all seen them: streetlights that shine brightly on slightly overcast days or that flicker off just when we need them the most, on dark rainy nights. Most of us glance up and keep driving. Not Phil Carrier. He knows how much these malfunctioning lights cost taxpayers and energy companies every year, and he knows how to fix the problem.

Carrier is vice president of sales and marketing at Innovative Wireless Technologies (IWT), a Central Virginia company that started out in the late 1990s, developing leading-edge technology for Sirius Radio and Bluetooth. One of IWT’s more recent products, Smartlights™, is currently being tested in cities and towns across the region.

According to Carrier, there are more than 60 million streetlights lining America’s roadways. In an average city, on any given day, 10 to 15 percent of the bulbs are burned out, malfunctioning, or in the process of failing. Finding these fixtures and troubleshooting each problem costs $1.2 billion a year. And that’s just the beginning. Much of the lighting technology in the U.S. is truly antiquated, based on a 100-year-old model. The sheer energy-wasting inefficiency of old-fashioned streetlighting is now costing close to $5 billion annually.

IWT’s “intelligent” lighting solution features a wireless sensor that communicates status information to a central monitoring station, where operators can analyze data, tweak performance, and streamline maintenance. In the not too distant

Smartlights™ future, faulty “day burners” will be remotely detected and adjusted, eliminating the need for fuel-consuming “drive by” patrols and follow-up diagnostics in the field.

IWT has had Smartlights™ technology ready to roll out for a few years now. But it took awhile for other pieces of the regional test-drive process to fall into place. First was the construction of the region’s multi-million dollar research and development facility, the Center for Advance Engineering and Research (CAER). Next, in 2010, one branch of Central Virginia’s economic partnership, the Region 2000 Local Government Council, received an energy conservation grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to put toward the project.

In an impressive public-private collaboration, the grant is helping to support the installation of Smartlights™ in Lynchburg and five surrounding localities. The CAER is hosting the network control center, the place where IWT, utility companies, and area engineering students will work to compare, test, and optimize energy savings.

Connecting the Green Dots

Whether you’re out to save the planet or just looking to save a few dollars on your heating and cooling costs, the Lynchburg Green Building Initiative (LGBI) can help you find the local resources you need to get started. The group publishes the Eco Book, a free, informative guide to green ideas, practices, products, and services. LBGI also presents the Green Expo, a two-day springtime event that puts organizations and businesses in touch with the wider Central Virginia community to share opportunities and expertise.

LGBI’s mission is to offer the region all of the tools necessary to make a sustainable community a reality. “It’s a big elephant to eat,” says Janet Rose-Campbell, the nonprofit’s new executive director. Campbell has a lot of experience getting people to take on serious challenges and have fun doing it. She played a part in Lynchburg’s successful downtown revitalization, working as the special events director at Lynch’s Landing and then as the manager of the Lynchburg Community Market.

The two-year-old organization offers workshops and meets with community groups and businesses interested in creating a more energy-efficient, sustainable future for Central Virginia. For more information, visit lynchburggreenbuildinginitiative.com.