LifeWines is a wine company producing and developing a portfolio of premium and ultra-premium wines using grapes grown organically in premier West Coast wine appellations, focusing on Napa and Sonoma Counties. As their website proudly announces, Life Wines is committed to organic and sustainable farming practices so we wholeheartedly support their efforts, their brand and their business. Oh yeah and they make tasty wine too, the companies first release of their 2005 Volta Cabernet has garnered the attention of some of the most respected wine critics in the United States including scores of 92 and 93 respectively from the Wine Spectator and Wine Library TV.

We really want to thank Steve & Stan for supporting us and we look forward to their many, many vintages yet to come.

Look for Volta and their other wines to be available to our members, however like every finely crafted wine, it may take a little time, their wines are

I want to thank Ben Moss, Katrina Campins and Jeremy Finer and all of The Campins Company here in Miami Beach for becoming our first corporate sponsor. I’ve know Ben and Katrina for years and they did a great job of selling one of my properties years ago just as the market was starting to go sour, so I have to thank them for the work they’ve done in the past and their support now. We really hope their involvement will broaden the awareness for Solar-S-Cool to the general public. We wish Katrina the best with her new reality show “Miami Social” set to air on Bravo July14th.

Take a look at the trailer and be sure to tune in…

As a Board member at Mast Academy I was very happy to get this email today from Margaret Haun —

Sent on behalf of Elizabeth Kourtesis, MAST Academy Advisory Board Chairperson, and Thomas C. Fisher II, Principal:

Newsweek magazine’s 2009 list of the Top 100 High Schools in the US was published just a couple of days ago–and MAST Academy ranks 49th in the nation! Newsweek’s ranking is based on the strength of a school’s Advanced Placement (AP) program. The size of the previous year’s graduating class is compared to the total number of AP exams administered; that comparison earns a school an index ranking. We are pleased to report that this year our index ranking bumped us up from 62 to 49 on the list.

We are very proud of MAST’s total academic program which is aligned to give all students who walk through our front doors an opportunity to take the most rigorous and challenging courses available to high school students anywhere.

We do indeed appreciate your support.

Wishing all of you calm seas this summer!

Elizabeth and Tom

You can get the whole list and follow the story here..

Tinte Cosmetics has officially become the first partner to sign on with Solar-S-Cool to offer our membership benefits. We’d really like to thank Stacy and Matt for showing their support. When we launch our member program and the first newsletter goes out in early July we will be offering membership discounts for their online store.

TINte Cosmetics is s prestige color cosmetic line that offers a range of Flavored Lip Shines, Flavored Lip Colors, Shimmering Pearled pigments, The New Match Book Collection, Painted Lady kit and several beauty kits. Our products are carried in high end boutiques
and department stores in the US, Japan, China, Dubai, The Netherlands and Germany. We pride ourselves on the quality of our products and the uniqueness of our packaging. TINte Cosmetics is worn by women who appreciate quality and style but still long for the not so serious side of life!

Obviously it helps to layout a plan of attack with goals so that we know where we’re going and how we’re doing. So, here is Solar-S-Cool’s fund raising goal for this summer – ie. by end of August.

We need about $29,000 for the wind turbine over at Mast Academy. The initial results were good. We are still analyzing the data, but from my understanding the basic start-up speeds and average wind speeds are right on.

Next I want to raise about $30,000 for 8 Coulomb EV car chargers. These guys retail for about $4,000 each or so (depending upon what model, where it’s mounted, ease of installation, availability of electrical service (you get the point)… but if we could pick up 8 of them than we could install 2 each at various schools in Miami-Dade… Get kids excited about the technology and start a small little network of chargers that people can go to.

Finally it would be nice to have about $5,000 for further operating expenses to get more schools to join and to help set them up so that when we finally launch the program full steam ahead in September we have the management and administration ready.

$65,000 is kind of a big number, but I think we can get there and heck even if we get only halfway there we can still work with that.

Well, we finally got all of our paperwork done and we have submitted to the IRS to become a 501 (c) 3 corp. The people that have helped us with all the application and paperwork told us that we should expect it to take about 4 to 6 months!!! However, they have seen approvals that have come through in as short as 2. So, let’s keep our fingers crossed and see how things go. For all of you who have supported us to date or are thinking about it, you should know that we incorporated Solar-S-Cool Project as a not-for-profit from day 1, so once we get our 501 (c) 3 status all donations a retroactively tax deductible from the date of incorporation, so if you give money, once we get approval you will still be able to write it off.

Today was the 13th Mast Academy Solar Celebration: The Sky Is The Limit. Super fun event for the students, teachers, parents and anyone else who wanted to attend. I was out of town, but got the goods from Chris who did go. I grabbed these photos off of the Dr. Khalil’s website which has a whole slideshow dedicated to the event. It’s worth scrolling through and checking out simply to get a first hand look at what Mast is doing and how worked up the students are to be participating – for school projects these guys are making solar powered boats, solar cookers, solar hot water heaters.

Pretty awesome stuff. For the past couple weeks some of the students have been coming down to the Electron Solar Energy workshop and they built an EV car!!! So, all I can say is that I am super impressed with these guys, they are all doing such fantastic work and it’s really great to see.

Well it took a little while, but we finally fixed up the solar golf cart for Mast and got it back to the school in time for their Solar Celebration on Wednesday…

Looking very cool with a kind of University of Miami paint job… a photo of Mast Academy Principal Thomas Fisher with some of the students checking out the new wheels…

If you look at the wind maps for the US, for the most part they tell you that Florida basically doesn’t have any wind resources. However, for those of us that live down here we know that there are pockets of places where there is a pretty steady wind a good part of the time. Jokester’s will say that we either have too much wind, or not enough… hahahaaa… funny. However, that being said, right along the beaches there always seems to be a nice gentle breeze coming off the ocean. For those of you who have been following our work, you know that we’ve been helping out at Mast Academy over on Key Biscayne for the past couple months, working with them to help manage their energy consumption in an effort to build a template which schools can use. With Mast Academy right on the water, and with their curiousity for all things green and sustainable, we thought this would be the ideal place to start taking wind measurements. So, sure enough with our friend Dirk and Tony from Green EcoSys, we set up the first anemometer over at the school. Couple neat pics and hopefully in a month or so we’ll have the first results.

Yes, this is the same post and photos from our Electron Blog, but there will be some cross over of course… Below is a photo of the meter fully set up and running well. We’ll have an update for you on the data as soon as we get it.

Another afternoon at Mast Academy, Dr. Khalil has a golf cart with solar panels on it which hasn’t been working so well. So we agreed that it would be fun to take it over to the shop and give it a fix up, new charge controller, a couple new batteries, better wiring etc… Here’s a photo of Chris checking it out while Dr. Khalil is explaining some of the issues they were having.