GreenStart's mission is to foster a resilient energy and food system for New Hampshire by providing technical education and practical agricultural examples. An educational non-profit organization established in 2006, GreenStart sees food and fuel security as the end-product of a vibrant, sustainable agriculture system in New Hampshire.
New Hampshire has 40% of its land area in agricultural soils, yet farms only 10% and imports 95% of its food and fuel. New Hampshire has no significant petroleum resources. To feed and fuel itself from sustainable natural resources, New Hampshire must improve its soils while also improving production.
To achieve this end, GreenStart facilitates projects that
1) increase soil carbon “banking”
2) decrease energy inputs
3) increase both food and fuel outputs (positive energy and carbon balance)
4) promote “tight” cycling of nutrients
5) provide opensource access to appropriate knowledge, seeds and equipment
I find the design challenge of fitting the gasifier components on a tractor daunting, and have thought mostly about sticking with stationary applications - but the install at the driveonwood site looks like it would be fairly functional.
The GEK site lists several folks in my area in New England some of whom I have I have connected with. This winter there was some talk about doing a tour of all the functional units. I will attempt to photograph and document what I learn. I am especially interested in the co-generation potential and using it to provide heat and power for our farm buildings. I think a big variable to make it viable in an on-farm installation over the longer haul will be efficient chipping, storage, drying and general materials management to keep it fed with high quality fuel. I think there is a lot in developing on-farm systems and appropriate affordable equipment and associated infrastructure.
I have been thinking about a 10KW unit which could also be used to pump water to holding ponds built on the high spots when there is extra capacity. The holding ponds would initially be used for irrigation and animal water, but could be fitted with a microhydro to act like a battery of sorts. My thought is to also use the grid as a backup through a transfer switch when the unit is not running.
The forums at All Power Labs is a great resource that I have been using to try and get myself up to speed. http://gekgasifier.com/forums/