Posted on 11/10/2006 11:33:50 AM PST by aculeus
Bingo. Ooh, I can't wait for my solar-powered segway!
It would cause a quick upheaval, but it would be a boon to the economy and the world. It would also remove the power from those countries which receive so many oil dollars.
Any time solar power becomes really affordable, I'll be the first to buy it. But it's nowhere near there yet.
You need an inverter, batteries, switches, wiring, and some place to stick the whole business that won't look too horrible. At the moment it's completely out of the question. But it's possible that they will work out the kinks, and at that point I'll jump in.
The sunlight isn't great in Vermont, but our power company is VERY expensive, which balances it out to some extent. One of our neighbors is installing solar power, but it's a feel-good exercise. They admit it will cost them a lot more than they'll save.
>>>You need an inverter, batteries, switches, wiring, and some place to stick the whole business that won't look too horrible.<<<
Forget batteries. They are too expensive, and too much of a headache. Rather, oversize your system to where the excess energy is "sold back" to the power company on "good days", and used up on "bad days".
For the purpose of this post, "sold back" means your power meter runs backwards; "good days" means days with lots of direct sunlight; and "bad days" means days with little or no direct sunlight (e.g., cloudy).
Note that if you want to be completely off the grid, you will have to use the battery method. Plan on an expensive system. It is better to stay on the grid.
Not so fast. The problem, as with most alternative energy sources, is storage -- batteries aren't terribly efficient. Even if you could power your house with photovoltaics under direct sunlight, you still have the other 12-16 hours of the day to contend with.
Until someone perfects a household cold fusion generator, there isn't going to be a single silver bullet for energy independence. But if you have millions of solar sites feeding power back into the grid during the day, you can ramp down the production of the fossil fuel-burning plants during those hours, and speed them back up at night.
Cutting the demand for oil and gas, naturally, cuts the amount we need to import, and also cuts the prices. If we ever reach the point where oil is literally cheaper than water, then the producers will process less of it as fuel and use more of it to make plastics.
If the demand for coal falls off enough, and the price bottom falls out, that doesn't change the fact that coal is an abundant, domestically-available fuel with a very high energy density. Making coal cheaper provides the incentive to process coal into a clean-burning liquid or gas fuel suitable for powering vehicles. Or all that cheap coal could power ethanol-producing plants, which would drastically change the cost equation for that fuel.
Bottom line, we hardly have to worry about -- and can hardly look forward to -- an overabundance of energy leading to an economic collapse anywhere. The first effect would be that we'd import less of it, and the second would be that we'd find other things to do with it.
Yeah, but when I get my magical over unity home fusion plant, I'm gonna want to use it to power air conditioners and heaters and televisions and computers and clock radios and my new Bose stereo louder than the wrath of God. I'm still going to be wearing clothes and talking on the telephone. And even in this wonderland of free energy, I might want to leave the house occasionally, and that's going to require some kind of vehicle. I'm not going to build all those things myself.
A cheap clean, alternative renewable energy source would be devastating to our petroleum based industry we have today, and will cause quite a economic downturn and a very long period of adjustment. But it still wouldn't be free.
Adjustment, I agree. Downturn, in some sectors, but not overall and not for long. The rise of the automobile was devastating to the buggy industry, and household electricity was crushing to the candle and lamp oil industry; but the buggy makers started making cars and the kerosine refineries started making gasoline, and many of them came out all right.
If petroleum is less desirable as fuel, the first effect is that we will import less of it, which will be a bummer for the tanker crews and depot operators, but we'll cope. If the value of petroleum as fuel collapses, then we get cheaper and better plastics, including synthetic textiles.
History suggests that when stuff becomes cheaper, we don't spend less -- we find more stuff to buy. I had a black and white TV for a large part of my childhood, because in the '70s a large color TV cost about a month's pay. Now that a 20" costs less than a day's pay, I have one in every bedroom and a much bigger one in the living room, all with two hundred channels of cable. When necessities become cheaper, resources shift to producing luxuries.
Completely free energy is another beast all together. We are way too overpopulated for such a thing to become available. You won't die in the cold, but good luck finding a job. They will be very hard to come by.
I have my job all picked out -- professional blogger. Sure, it's a niche today, but with all those folks with time on their hands and money to spare since they don't have to pay for energy any more, I think I could carve out a niche. I'm not worried about global overabundance as a great looming threat.
Get me off the grid reminder bump! ;-)
Death Valley could be re-named Light Valley.. and be a resource instead of a wasteland..
You think he voted absentee?
I confess I haven't looked closely into that, but I think you're right.
Also, I wouldn't need to sell power back to the company, probably. As long as it was cheaper, I'd be happy simply to reduce my electric bills rather than eliminating them. We have a socialist system in Vermont, where the first kilowatts are actually cheaper, and then if you use more than the minimum, you pay more; the reverse of what is normal from an economic standpoint. So small houses benefit and larger houses with kids suffer.
Solar ping!
"Hire the illegals to polish the lenses everyday"
Happily we won't need to. The sun does'nt produce as much sooty smoke as whale oil.
bump for reading later - looks good
This voltage is used to crack the hydrogen out of water. They hydrogen is then used to power fuel cells.
It doesn't take much dust to reduce the amount of sunlight by half.
what about three percent in plants that are being phased out?
oil fired dissappeared in these parts about 30 years ago.
I see dozens of coal fired plants with ng peak being built.
the embargos of the 70's nearly killed the market, cheap ng in the 80's and 90's did the rest.
You mean in the same way that dirt-cheap computing "crippled our economy as we knew it"?
If you only knew, if you ONLY KNEW...
Ping for later read/reference. Thanks for posting.
XSUNX....It is on its way back up!
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