Premier green prefab firm closing its doors.

Yikes - Michelle Kaufmann has long been a leader in the green prefab industry and has fallen victim to current circumstances.  As newcomers to the green prefab world, we've been watching her closely - this news just underscores the challenges (and opportunities) ahead for us as we delve into this world.

Modern Prefab On The Ropes: Michelle Kaufmann Packs It In

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/michelle-kaufmann-packs-it-in.php

"A year ago I wrote that modern prefab had lived fast, died young and left a good looking corpse. But I thought if anyone would survive it would be Michelle Kaufmann, the queen of prefab design and marketing, who when I wrote her best of green award, said "an entire industry rides on her coat-tails."

When times were good, Michelle could not find factories to build her stuff; they were making too much money building crap. When the crap market dried up, so did they. Then the banking crisis delivered the final cut, and it is over."

BrightBuilt Barn at AIGA CompostModern Maine

Our presentation to CompostModern Maine was a success.  We learned a lot in organizing our thoughts for the talk and had a captive audience throughout, including a lively discussion after the presentation.  We've uploaded a copy of the presentation to Slide Share (without the charming words) in case anyone wants to see what BrightBuilt did to us as a studio.

BrightBuilt Barn at AIGA CompostModern Maine

View more presentations from kaplanthompson.

Measuring Performance

Updated energy figures as of 5:00 PM today, May 18:

Total electricity produced from go-live in October 2008:   3135 kwh

Total electricity consumed by the Barn in the same period: 1001 kwh

Total surplus to date: 2134 kwh

My electric bill at the main house for April: $7.95

Soon we will have the new and improved website implemented, which will have all performance numbers continuously updated. Stay tuned.

This Saturday, Jesse Thompson and Robin Tannenbaum from Kaplan Thompson will be presenting the BrightBuilt Barn at Compostmodern ME. This is a one day conference geared towards designers and followers of the sustainability movement that explores how incorporating sustainability practices in the design process can help create a socially, ecologically and economically responsible society. Check out http://maine.aiga.org for more information or just come on down.

PowerDash

Real time energy monitoring of the BrightBuilt Barn is almost here. As Keith discussed in the last post, the barn is performing beautifully and is producing so much energy that it is even offsetting most of the energy use of the main house on his property. Our newest partner in the BBB endeavor is PowerDash, a Massachusetts based energy monitoring company that is setting up a network to translate information about energy production and consumption from the barn into an easy to read easy to understand format that for our website. Stephen Lapointe, one of PowerDash partners joined us on site in late April to work on nuts and bolts of this process.