Directions to Energy Cafe at Powerstock Common
April 18, 2011
go to dorchester, drive on to the brdport road. look out for a sign on you right to compton valence. it is by a house where they sell pallets. you cant miss it. take that right. here be careful you are going on a sharp right from a busy a road to a tiny lane. this tiny lane is an old roman road very straight . go striahgt over th e crossroads, go straight over where the road bends ot the right, literally stright but not following the main road. keep going towards eggardon hill/ toller porcorum. at eggardon (an old hill fort) you take a right and go straight down, soon you will be in the woods of the common. you will get to a fork, bear left. soon you will see the railway bridge and the common car park on the left.
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Release yourself from the Grid!
Energy Cafe is hosting this Wind Turbine Building course by V3 Power
Weekend of 21st & 22nd May 2011
9.00am – 6.00pm
Hawkwood Plant Nursery, Chingford E4 7UH
During this weekend course V3 Power will be teaching how to build a 1.2m diameter, 12V turbine from scratch along with tower and electrical system (to be integrated with Sally the Power Trolley!) for Energy Cafe.
You will get direct and significant hands-on experience carving turbine blades, wiring copper coils, soldering the stator, constructing the magnet rotors and welding the metal frame. By the end of the weekend the turbine will be up and running and you will have gained a good working knowledge of how to make a ‘Hugh Piggott’ turbine.
V3 courses are suitable for people without any prior engineering or practical experience who are keen to learn something completely new, and for people with loads of engineering experience wanting to get hands on with wind turbines. The fact that V3 have one instructor per 4 participants means they can ensure everyone is getting what they want from the course.
Fee: £230 or £180 concessions
The fee includes local-produce lunches prepared at Energy Cafe.
We can provide details of campsites nearby if you need accommodation.
Places are limited so book soon!
Email: pilotpublishing@googlemail.com or phone: 07791246022
Sunday 27 March
On the road again
Vince’s landy tows the trailer past Haggerston Gasworks…
back to Hawkwood Nursery, Chingford just in time to open up to serve nettle and mint tea with a taster of cake to the open day crew and visitors. Today they have been learning all about sprouting.
Saturday 26 March
Here is Energy Cafe at Regents Studios car park in Hackney. A few visitors popped in and friends joined us for the afternoon. Energy Cafe is run on people energy – depends on this to keep it going. To chop the wood to build the fire to heat the stove to cook the food… James starts the process and chops wood. The logs are from Powerstock Common in Dorset. It burns very well in Henry Ranger.
Lucy arrives to continue working on what she has now named Sally the Power Trolley to accompany Henry Ranger, the swirl stove sisters, Lazy Susan in the sky with spices and Sunny.
Not much sun to charge up the battery today.
Energy Cafe needs signage. Luck and natural talent comes today as Jeb offers to make one.
A beautifully designed hand drawn sign; Coloured Chalk on Blackboard By Jeb Kruger Bentley.
late lunch turned out to be a cheesy omelette – with hand picked spinach from Amy’s garden and potatoes from Hawkwood weekly veg bags.
just enough for five servings..
Energy Cafe can cook up anywhere. Today it is in the car park that looks out to Regents Canal. (see www.londonboaters.org for news on the action going on at the moment. Changes are being proposed that will effect daily life on the canals. Support is needed).
Energy Cafe received an encouraging thumbs up from Jeb – Awesome of the highest rank. Him and his dad James wrote these comments in our guest book:
Micro-generation Experimentation is now on wheels and off the grid…
Over the last few days in the Regents Studios car park we have been working on the unique sun powered system.
The design is a collaboration between the energy cafe team and Lucy Sheldon and has been supported by Barden Batteries.
This micro generation experimentation has been developed to provide and explore off-grid energy at the “cafe”. The equipment is loaded onto a trolley and connects to a solar panel. Very soon we’ll be able to connect to wind and bikes too.
The system:
* 130w solar panel (solara)
* 128 Ah AMG Battery
* 250W of 240V AC power including a safety system
Spring news
Over the super moon equinox weekend we teamed up with Drawing Club – run by Sebastian Lowsley Williams – to host a day of drawing the trailer and its contents for the making of the Energy Cafe user manual.
Regents Studios runs parallel to Broadway Market – one of the busiest saturday markets in the east end. Situated slightly off the main drag we were able to unfold all the cafe resources and naturally occupy the car park for the afternoon.
The sun beat down into the early eve.
as Dandelion posed with swirl stove and solar cooker…
Meanwhile on the menu; spring soup for all the crew, potato cake…
and a special egguinox honey and banana cake. it was the first cake to be baked in the windy smithy oven. Baked for half an hour at 250degrees.
Rachael Matthews made a beautiful drawing of the solar powered unit on wheels (prototype 1) , designed by Lucy Sheldon. Read more on the Prick Your Finger blog.
It was a great day! Thanks for all who participated and made lovely drawings of the situation and to Dandelion the drawing club model. Energy cafe user Manual will be online soon!
Make Your Mark
The state, color, function and future of the trailer’s exterior has been hotly debated over the last year. We’ve been asking people to come up with their ideas for how it could be customized and here we’ve visualized some of the results.
Beach Cafe
Meadow Cafe
Forest Cafe
Moonlighting Cafe
Desert Cafe
Paris Cafe
Rainbow Cafe
Garden Cafe
A big thanks to everyone who contributed, including, Dominique, Kim, Emily, Theo, Elsa and Emily!
Can you imagine the trailer transformed? The possibilities are endless! We’ve uploaded the trailer template, if you’d like to make your own visualization, download, draw, email it and we’ll publish it on the blog.
trailer template
Winter Launch!!! at Prick Your Finger
9th December 2010
At last! The moment we’ve all been waiting for! The newly customized Energy Cafe trailer is towed to its first ‘gig’ in public space!
Unveiling its shiny self on Globe Road, Bethnal Green, East London, to coincide with an opening at the world’s greatest haberdashery shop: Prick Your Finger
Wood smoke mingled with the lights and electrical atmosphere of this busy corner in London, bringing a touch of candle-light ‘countryside’ to the city.
Inside Prick Your Finger, Gina Birch from the Raincoats, rocked out to her exhibition of slogans, bags and banners called ’57 Ways’…
…while Energy Cafe was clearly an intriguing and charming street side attraction for visitors and locals, who’d like to see it return to their neighborhood! Over the last six months, we’ve been inviting people to share their thoughts on what locations, activities and events Energy Cafe could be involved with in the future. We’ve found that there is no shortage of ideas and interest for Energy Cafe as a community resource. All this talk has helped us in putting together a user-friendly manual: Coming Soon!!
A seasonal menu of mince pies and chocolate clementines was served up with piping hot, locally brewed spiced cider and wine mulled on the ranger…
…fired up with roadside-chopped waste wood.
How many people can you fit into a converted horse box? There must have been at least 25 squeezed in at one point…
Many thanks to Rachael and Louise from Prick Your Finger, to Vince for towing, Amanda and Ross for helping out on the night, James and others for supplying extra wood for the burner and to everyone who came to toast Energy Cafe’s new chapter and future nomadic adventures.
Not forgetting the police officer who directed us out of the one way street in the morning! As Energy Cafe was towed by Simon all the way to deepest Dorset.
We spent three days serving lunch on Powerstock Common, doing a ‘recce’ with locals for a future springtime event as part of artist, Anna Best‘s project: A Road For the Future.
We’ll keep you posted!
Energy Cafe 