Meet the three forces that will forever change our world -- and not just transportation:
Electric cars,  solar PV, and computational power.

As a BMW ActiveE driver, former Mini-E driver, and, as the owner of a paid in full 7.5 kW home solar PV power plant,  I’ve clocked more than 50,000 miles in electric cars powered by electricity generated from solar energy. I’ve seen firsthand, as a practitioner, the amazing advances and decreasing prices of both technologies over the past five years. 

Looking forward to the next five years, I predict cost parity for the electric vehicle compared to the price of a gasoline car, I see an average range of 125-150 miles, and, when needed for longer drives, 20 minute charges.

Lastly, I see a cost of a lifetime power source for an electric car (solar PV) of less than the cost of buying gasoline for two years. Solar PV will continue to get cheaper.  Gasoline will continue to get more expensive. Bet on it.

Electric cars in Colorado are getting a boost thanks to the Colorado Renewable Energy Society’s Electric Avenue EV promotion, which is being held May 16-17 at a parking lot directly across from the Colorado Convention Center, itself playing host to the week-long World Renewable Energy Forum sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society.

I spent a couple hours at the Electric Avenue event and interviewed several of the participants this morning and put together a short video [see above]. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it :-)

Even the locally famous bear is excited about EV + PV, which is getting plenty of attention at the World Renewable Enegy Forum at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colo.

Solar-charged driving might not be taking off as quickly as I’d hoped back when I started SolarChargedDriving.Com nearly three years ago.

But there’s plenty of evidence that EV and solar PV are coming together in the U.S. and that more and more solar folks are getting fired up about EVs and more and more EV folks are getting fired up about solar.

I saw, and experienced, some of the significant enthusiasm for EVs in the solar world today at the American Solar Energy Society’s (ASES) World Renewable Energy Forum here in Denver, Colo., where I attended one panel on EV + PV and led another panel on solar-charged driving later in the day.

Each session on EV + PV attracted about 60 WREF conference goers. That was enough to come close to filling the rooms in which the sessions were held at the Colorado Convention Center.

Several thousand people are attending the American Solar Energy Society's World Renewable Energy Forum in Denver, Colo. [Photo by Christof Demont-Heinrich]

I’m attending, and presenting at, the American Solar Energy Society’s World Renewable Energy Forum (WREF) in Denver, Colo. this week along with thousands of other renewable energy experts and enthusiasts -- I’m definitely part of the latter group, not the former ;-)

To get to WREF, I hopped on the Denver RTD light rail and zipped from the University of Denver, where I teach journalism and communication courses, to the Colorado Convention Center, which boasts a 300 kilowatt solar system which covers about 15 percent of its annual electric use.

As the light rail train sped northward from DU to downtown Denver on yet another beautiful, blue-sky perfect-for-solar Colorado day, we passed a long train going the other way pulling dozens and dozens of cars full of – you guessed it – coal.

[Photo credit: Robynne Millward of Manly Environment Centre.]

We’ve written before about how solar companies are waking up to the power of EVs as a rolling marketing tool for solar and for their company.

As we’ve noted in the past, more and more solar companies are buying or leasing EVs such as the Nissan LEAF, Chevy Volt, Mitsubishi iMiEV, etc. and ad-wrapping them to help sell solar, and their solar company, as a clean, green ticket to auto fueling independence.

Of course, until now, the solar companies we’ve found which have ad-wrapped an EV to help sell their wares, and, more broadly, solar-charged driving, were all located in the United States.

Add Australia as another country in which at least one solar firm is tapping the power of EVs as a rolling marketing machine for solar.