DocAndersen
In a comment, yesterday @Ellie reminded me that I should just let it go! I suspect the use of the Frozen movie song was my choice!
Five years ago I thought every home would have a 3d printer. I will be honest; while I see more and more homes with them, they won’t be in every home. I wish every home at Solar power on the roof. The offset of local Micro-Grids for the ecology is not measurable — the economic impact of cheaper power for most people as well, huge. The reality of Solar power is that it produces clean power. Vivant and Solar City (a Tesla company) both lease systems for your roof. Solar City offers you the chance to buy the system after five years, obviously at a reduced cost. Solar City currently sells you your roof produced solar electricity at 11 cents per KWpH. According to Neeeco’s Mass Save Home Energy Audit, Most US power companies charge between 15 and 19 cents. It means you save a 1/3 of your cost.
The other cool thing about solar power is that when the sun is at its brightest, you are producing power. That means if there is a regional or local brownout, it doesn’t impact your house! Frankly, there remain two obstacles that are concerning in the US regarding Solar Power. The first is the HOA or Home Owners Associations and rules about Solar. Solar power on your roof increases the value of the house. HOA’s, however, haven’t moved into the modern world and therefore haven’t changed some of their rules. The other issue is a little more concerning and has to do with the actual hardware for power at your house. The older power meters cannot reconcile power produced locally (your roof) versus power from the power company. Your bill won’t go down, you need one of the new Digital house power meters, and those cost money. Many power companies are dragging their feet on deploying the new meters. Ergo, you have to ask for one to get one at your house!
Germany, Holland, and Sweeden lead the world in the deployed Solar. Portugal and Denmark produce large proportions of their power from wind farms. Clean energy helps everyone. You get cheaper power, which considering the impact of IoT devices tomorrow, will be huge (IoT is the Internet of Things, or particular any connected device). 2018 was the 4th hottest year in recorded weather history. The top 5 all-time recorded temperature averages are the last five years. Deploying more wind, solar and natural energy sources will help all of us!
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Question of
Do you have a home energy source?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
Is Solar a big deal where you live?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
Have you seen wind farms?
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Yes
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No
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There are also many wind turbines in Spain, but solar flares are now luxury. They are not in mass use. And the elegancy has a fairly high price.
It is an interesting problem. Wind turbines do require more space. Solar power, is all over the EU. Wonder why Spain is holding out…
You already know I want solar power, any type of power so I do not have to pay the extremely high monthly bills.
Do you have centrral heat and air?
How many batteries do you have?
Alabama does not feed solar back into the grid.
Pinned this.
At this point, I don’t have batteries, but I do have a 20KW system on the roof. Batteries are on the list but at this point, they cost 4000 dollars.
they’ve had a huge wind farm around Palm Springs since before the turn of the century…
There is a band across northern Indiana of more than 1000 wind turbines!
turns out the one in 29 Palms has over 4k
https://www.palmsprings.com/attractions/windmills/
That is one I haven’t seen, but would love to1 Thanks Alex!
it is miles from nowhere so not worth the effort IMHO. but impressive if you have to pass it by, just goes on forever…
I answered that I had never seen a wind farm meaning I’ve never seen one in person, just photos. I have seen places with one or two.
Solar energy is not the panacea that many think it is. I wrote this a while ago about one of the huge problems it creates: https://virily.com/technology/solar-power-safe-led-believe/
We also know that wind turbines kill a lot of birds.
Right now the best thing we can do is to try to conserve energy. That idiotic Green New Deal that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced yesterday is completely undoable – the original website included making cows fart less – but it does point out that increasing efficiency is helpful. Of course she wants every building in the USA replaced or retrofitted within 10-12 years and that isn’t going to happen. However, we can buy fuel-efficient cars, replace broken appliances with energy-efficient ones, turn off the lights when we leave the room, etc.
Hopefully, as time goes on, we will be able to better utilize the sun and wind safely but we are not able to at present.
Gary, I’ve read your previous post again.
1, The study you site (and you don’t actually provide a link to it) has been debunked.
2. Solar panels on average last 20 years or more. when you factor the waste products (that can be roughly 50% recycled and are significantly less than denote) . Solar arrays on a roof DO NOT RELEASE ANYTHING INTO THE ATMOSPHERE on a daily basis. Therefore the impact of the pollutants has to be measured over a 20-25 year lifecycle. You then recycle `1/2 of the base (that captures the sun) and roughly 90%.
The US EPA continues to update their solar site https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange//kids/solutions/technologies/solar.html please note that I am providing a link to their overall solar site. The reality of the EPA is that they study the impact of solar.
Your original article was well written.
Give me a link to a valid scientific study that supports your position. I’ve provided a link to a validated reviewed site produced by the EPA.
As for your repeated contention that wind farms kill birds, please provide a non-solar energy company report that says that.
I don’t have another electricity source other than those from electricity companies. I saw its use is still quite rare in public even though it has been around a long time. But our government seems to have built several clean energy facilities.
It has become a global problem. The reality is we still have to fight the battle both with misinformation as well as people publishing information that is at best wrong.
In our country, temperatures are higher every year, so I started to think about solar energy. Every day more people decide for solar energy
The EU is so far ahead in deploying Solar it is incredible.
The EU is working hard to have as much “clean” energy as possible. The wind energy is also growing.
it is, Amsterdam is a great example of the smart city of tomorrow, today!
Such an interesting post. I love Colorado and all the wind turbines.
Colorado has many wind farms. It is awesome!
If more countries in the world would even come up to the standards used in the US, clean energy wouldn’t be much of an issue. The sad thing is that whenever the UN or other international body talks about green energy or anything similar, they expect the US to increase energy standards. The US already has one of the highest energy standards in the world. Major polluters like China produce many times more pollution than the US does. Of course, we can’t top countries like Iceland, where 98% of homes and businesses are heated with geothermal heat and there isn’t much industry.
Driving from here to Oregon, a person passes through a huge number of miles of wind generators in Washington State. Montana is known for clean air. That is because easily the number one polluter in the state is nature, in the form of yearly forest fires. So far, pollution laws haven’t stopped a single forest fire from polluting. LOL
OK, so I agree with many of your points and you are 100% correct about forest fires.
However, If you take China today and the US today China produces more. However, the pollutants we are talking about don’t go away. Once created they exist. The thing tath you didn’t mention to be fair, is that the US has produced more greenhouse gas over the last 50 years than any other nation on earth.
I spent a lot of time in Shanghai and Beijing. The pollutants in China today are horrific. But the problem isn’t the pollutants in the air from today. It is today + yesterday. The Solar standards in Holland and Germany are significantly higher than in the US. One produces more than 28% of its total national energy from solar the other just crossed 35%.
Your example of Iceland is an interesting one. Even though the vast majority of their heating comes from geothermal, they have fully embraced being 100% green by 2025. In that case isn’t it fair for the rest of us to cut back?
China also is a huge water polluter. I don’t know if it has changed, but about a decade ago, nearly all of the raw sewage and the industrial wastes produced by the 7.5 million people in Hong Kong were dumped into the ocean. That’s an enormous amount of waste.
There’s no doubt that many countries produce less air pollution than the US. It is worth noting that for a lot of them, this isn’t because of pollutant standards and some of them have no enforced standards at all. Rather, it is because those countries are not very industrialized. Many are among the poorest in the world. For example, Nepal doesn’t produce a huge amount of pollution, but they are an extremely poor country that relies primarily on tourism, and most of the goods they have are imported.
The US, for good or bad, has thrived on environmental regulations for a very long time. Just one example of that is the rule that one acre of trees must be planted for every acre that is harvested, on federal land. It actually works out to be 1.5 acres planted for every acre taken, but that is more than the law dictates. As a result, there are more trees in the US today than there were in 1800. If other countries had done that, many of the places in Europe and the Middle East would still have vast forests.
Unfortunately, in terms of the trees, the law doesn’t extend to private land ownership, as far as I know. A person who buys a heavily forested piece of land can remove all the trees if they want to. The law is specific to public federal lands.
I agree that the maturity of pollution laws have to be applied across the board. Just wanted to play the other side a little, that the US has pushed a lot of stuff into the environment, from 1910 to 1950 at a much higher rate than China is now.
China is bad I agree.
I suspect the best thing is a balance.
The US forestry laws were actually embraced (for the most part) by Canda as well. The problem is the deforestation and destruction in the rain forest where it isn’t followed.