After completing two years of general education studies at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut California, I am now (September 2003) pursuing a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering which I plan to complete by 2006. My current interests are areas of study that will enable me to design and build solar electric power generating facilities. I have begun a small prototype parabolic reflector of about 5 kW from parts that I have scrounged together from an old microwave satellite antennae and a gasoline fired electric generator. I still need a compressor, boiler and a steam engine. Hopefully by the time I am finished here at Cal Poly I will have completed the design of not only this small protoType, but also 250kW power stations that you can place on top of your own house and the facilities to manufacture these and much larger 100MW power plants that could someday speckle our now barren deserts and oceans. You can find out more about this project by viewing my latest scholarship application document. http://www.csupomona.edu/~cthompson1/ScholarshipRequest.htm

    For nearly 30 years I have been a computer systems programmer and network analyst, and now that my family has all grown up, I have discovered that I have the luxury to endeavor in interests that are more humanitarian, enlightening, altruistic, and socially beneficial than those that I have pursued in the past behind a computer screen.

Check out my "Power to the People" Project Status and Task List.

    If you want to help fund further Solar Energy research here at Cal Poly Pomona, please contact either the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs or myself at cthompson1@csupomona.edu.