By Fully Charged Live in the Austin, Texas just wrapped up, and the turn out was incredible. I was so excited to not only be there as a fan, but also as one of the presenters along with a lot of other familiar YouTube faces … I’ll get to that a little later though. I had a chance to talk to a bunch of companies that do everything from optimizing how your solar energy is used in your home to battery recycling, as well as some awesome Tesla accessories. But I think people were most excited about things like seeing the Porsche Taycan, Audi E-tron, Rivian’s R1T, Harley Davidson’s Livewire, as well as Arcimoto and their FUV.
I did manage to get a few minutes alone with a pretty cool company that does EV conversions on classic cars in the Austin area, Moment Motors. I spoke with their founder, Marc Davis, about what they do.
I was on the “How to have a fully charged home” panel, which was hosted by Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield from Transport Evolved and included some great panelists like the architect Veronica Castro de Barrera, Cameron Freberg from Austin Energy, Joseph Barletta from Smart Charge America, and Chris Darby from EV Energy. The Fully Charged channel will be releasing a video of that session, so be sure to stay tuned there if you want to see it. I’ll also link to it in this videos description once it’s live. But one of the many cool things discussed on the panel was around Victoria’s push for taking the environment into account to design smarter and more efficient communities and homes.
Related to that a couple of fans of the channel told me about some interesting developments in Austin that involved something along those lines. I’d like to thank the Tompsett’s for telling me about Whisper Valley, which is a new green community being built in the Austin area. It’s funded by Taurus Investment Holdings in Boston, MA. Each house will have solar and Google Fiber, as well as being designed from the ground up to be a highly efficient home. This community has received the LEEDS Gold certification. It’s awesome to see homes taking into account their orientation and roof lines to make them great candidates for solar efficiency.
And a special thanks to Dan (I hope I remembered your name correctly …. I’m horrible with names). He suggested checking out the Austin Central Library, which opened in 2017. It’s the first LEEDS Platinum certified building in Austin and is absolutely a gorgeous library. The central atrium isn’t just nice to look at, but it provides daylight to 80% of the occupied spaces. It also has lights that automatically dim depending on how much sunlight is making it into the building, which helps to reduce energy use. I worked in libraries through high school and college, so I have a bit of a soft spot for them. As cool as the Boston library is, Austin’s library really feels like the library of the future.
As for my talk I was really surprised at the turnout. I honestly thought the room might be half full at most, but there was standing room only. In fact, it was standing room only for most of the talks, which was incredible … Fully Charged Live is going to need a bigger space next year.
The entire weekend was kind of mind blowing to me. I work in a tiny bubble here in my office … talking to a camera all by myself. I read as many of the comments as I can, but can’t respond to all of them. But having so many of you come over and say hello was kind of eye opening to me. Putting faces to names from regular viewers I see in the comments, and getting to meet a bunch of Patrons and chat. I’m truly humbled. Thank you all so much for being so kind and thoughtful.
And before I close this out, I’d like to give an extra big thank you to Fully Charged for inviting me to the event. Sadly, Robert Llewylln had to head home early because of a health issue, but everyone understood and sent him lots of well wishes. Everyone on the team was amazing and pulled off an incredible event. I really hope I get a chance to participate again in the future, but even if I don’t, I’ll be there as a fan.
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