Alternative energy
What is alternative energy, how do I obtain it and what does it mean to my world
Heating your home, providing your electricity needs, getting around and much more does not have to mean that you need to pollute the environment.
Many solutions are now ready for both commercial and personal application such as Heat Pumps and wind power
It is time for people to rethink transportation and alternative
energy and It's time we started thinking big. On looking into
photovoltaic technology (in particular research being done at MIT, UC
Berkeley and the University of Delaware) it seems utilizing the best
current technology we can convert sunlight to electricity at a maximum
of 41% efficiency. Sunlight provides approx. 1000 watts/square meter at
the surface of the earth. That's quite a few light bulbs per square
meter.
Emerging thin film technology is converting about 10% of
the energy from sunlight to electricity but it also allows for the
integration of photovoltaic technology directly into the building
materials themselves. By most accounts, photovoltaic technology is fast
approaching cost parity with fossil fuels. Current research focused on
storage and future updates to transmission capability offer the
potential for revolutionary changes to our energy infrastructure.
Integration with mass transit such as high speed rail could be game
changing developments for the United States and the world.
Ask
yourself, why hasn't photovoltaic technology been more fully explored?
The technology has been around since we were kids. One of the answers
may be that neither wind nor sunlight can be owned, and therefore they
cant be sold. While industry can sell us the equipment to utilize the
energy inherent in wind and sunlight, it will be difficult to sell us
the energy itself on a per watt basis. This hasn't stopped companies
and utilities from trying. In fact, this is one of the ways
photovoltaic technology seems to be developing in the United States.
Companies lease out the expensive equipment and sell the energy back to
us on a per watt basis. In Australia by contrast, people buy the
equipment without paying per watt for the power generated.
One
day soon, probably in our lifetimes, people will begin to think about
energy in the same way we used to think about our air; plentiful,
abundant and clean. When we rethink energy everything will change.
