On 1/28/08, frank theriault <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I could be wrong, but I don't think that wind and solar power are the > dead-ends that you paint them out to be. I don't think wind-farms are > the answer, nor do I think that acres and acres of solar panels out in > the desert are the answer either. > > Think small, think local. > > How about a wind-generator on every roof? How about solar panels on > every roof to heat our water and/or our houses? They don't have to > provide every single watt necessary - we can still tap into our local > electric grid, and on windy/sunny days, the excess power is actually > sent into the grid, and the homeowner is credited for it, essentially > getting free power on cloudy/calm days. The electricity savings are > substantial. > > Expensive? Maybe, due to economies of scale. Once every new house > being constructed has these things on them, the price will plummet. > In Toronto the price of a new house averages something like $300,000. > Why balk at spending another $10K for devices that will save more than > that over the life of the home? > > Will that alone save the planet? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it makes a > hell of a lot more sense than the "mega-projects" that we've used to > power our dwellings and other buildings. > > Unsightly? Maybe. So are satellite dishes, and so were TV aerials in > the 60's, but people still erected those, and didn't mind them because > they were (and still are, WRT dishes) considered useful. > > We can keep saying it can't be done, or we can do something about it. > > BTW, please stop throwing Kyoto at us. It's so flawed, so useless, > that I suspect the only reason it was ever ratified was so that global > warming deniers could then say "Kyoto will never work, so the > environmentalists are wrong - there's no solution." Kyoto's not the > answer, never was, never will be. > > cheers, > frank > Actually, wind and solar are mostly useless for widespread use until a high-efficiency, high capacity engery storage system is developed. They simply don't produce enough power when it's needed (Particularly a problem with solar in colder climates, where energy use is highest after the sun goes down). Of course Solar Power Sattelites solve the issue for solar, the solution is think bigger, not smaller.
Wind has some uses, but never will be more than a minor addition. Clean power comes down to Nukes, Hydroelectric power and SPS-type off-planet production. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
