Energy Solutions

Energy Solutions – The only way is up!

When considering energy solutions the only place to look, is up. Look up to the sky and see the newest of our clean, green energy solutions shining down on us.

The heat and strength of the suns rays can be easily converted to solar energy, which can power homes and industries. The rays are caught by the solar panels that are usually placed on the roof of your building. They are fed into an inverter, which converts them to energy of the right voltage for use.

Every time the sun shines, solar panels are creating energy - often more than your household can use. Even on a cloudy day your solar panels are still generating power. If you are connected to a grid, (which you will be unless you are in a remote area) the excess power can be sold back to the power company. Just imagine your energy company paying you rather than billing! It is like having your own power generator sitting on your property.

During the night or in periods when there is no sunlight consumers can buy their power back again and be comfortable knowing that it is clean and renewable energy.

Solar energy can power all your appliances, your lighting and even your hot water service.

While the initial investment can be expensive, consumers save money in the long term by generating their own energy. The actual equipment has no moving parts so it will last for a very long time with no wear and tear or replacement costs. Adding solar panels to a home can sometimes increase its value in the market, too, as buyers see the benefits in reduced power bills.

Solar power is reliable and continually available. It does not harm the planet and it is easy to generate. It can power small buildings and large communities. It is affordable and even has the capacity to generate an income for you.

When you are looking for energy solutions, look up. The answer is waiting for you in the sky!

Compare gas and electricity suppliers and find energy companies providing green solutions. This saves money and supplies financing to the gas and electricity providers that are moving towards alternative energy.

Solar Power Heroes

Solar Power Heroes

by Deb Powers

When I was growing up, I fell in love with the beautiful Elsa, the lioness star of the movie Born Free. My favorite television series was Daktari, a show about an animal clinic and research center in Africa. I don't remember the names of the human actors, but Clarence the Cross-eyed Lion and Judy the chimp are a part of my childhood. I marveled at the animals, fell in love with the scenery and the land, and never once wondered where the doctors got the electricity to power the electric lights and radio and communications equipment on which their missions relied. If I had wondered, I would never have thought twice about the need to transport kerosene and gasoline into remote areas to power base camps and outlying stations. After all, I grew up in a city where electricity and gas was a given - just flip a switch and it was on.

What's got me musing about this this morning is an article about a solar power hero from the San Francisco Chronicle. Stephen Gold is a San Francisco building contractor who specializes in plumbing and electrical supplies. He is also a long time fan of solar power - his own house sports solar panels. He also feels very strongly about the conservation of the wild habitat for the animals that call it home. As he told a  reporter for the Chronicle, "You go into the bush and look in the eyes of another animal, and it changes you," he said. "I want future generations to see these animals."

A few years ago, he was attending a wildlife conservation workshop and heard one of the researchers complaining about power generation, and how unreliable electricity can make her research work so much more difficult. It occurred to him that kerosene and gasoline power generators might not be the ideal solution for powering research equipment in an unspoiled landscape. That started him on a quest to supply remote research stations with solar-powered generators and equipment.

Working with the National Conservation Society and major solar equipment suppliers, Gold has managed to outfit 11 research projects since 2006 with donated solar power generation equipment. For the past three years, he has used his home garage to store, assemble, package and ship solar power kits out to research projects in such far-flung places as Mongolia, Tanzania and Botswana.

His efforts have a huge impact on the lives of the researchers, who all put reliable power at the top of the list of things required for them to do their work. All agree that solar power is far more reliable than the generators on which they had been depending, and even those who are on the electrical grid find that the solar power is more reliable than grid power.

Read more: Wildlife Researchers Get Solar Boost Thanks to Solar Hero

Solar Aid - Power to the People

Dr. Jeremy Leggett worked in the oil industry in the 1980s, until he became aware of the dangers of climate change and global warming. He left the oil companies to become a chief researcher with Greenpeace, and eventually founded his own company, Solarcentury. Solarcentury was dedicated to helping create a cleaner, safer world through distributed renewable energy. From its beginning, Solarcentury committed 5% of its profits to charity, going so far as to write it into the constitution of the company. In 2006 when Solarcentury made a profit, Leggett's corporation formed Solar Aid as an independent charity dedicated to bringing power to the people of developing nations in the form of distributed solar equipment.

Solar Aid has developed a model that they call microsolar, which the organization claims is more than a way to produce clean energy. It's a model that brings power to the people in more ways than one. According to Leggett, the average family in a developing nation spends up to 20% of its income on fuel for wood fires and power generators, and on batteries to power cell phones and other necessities. By providing individual solar energy generators, Solar Aid not only provides clean, reliable energy for the families, but frees up the income that had been devoted to cooking and powering their homes.

Solar Aid's mission goes much further than putting up solar panels on homes, though. On a smaller scale, the organization makes available solar lanterns with LED lamps, which can free a family from reliance on smoky fires for light at night. By providing solar generators, solar powered cell phones and solar powerd batteries, Solar Aid helps make the environment cleaner and the people safer. The organization works with local entrepreneurs and communities to bring solar power to schools, community centers and clinics in Tanzania, Argentina, Malawi and Zambia.

Powered by a Board of Directors drawn from high profile companies around the world, Solar Aid takes a progressive approach to charity. The organization does not just come in with a team and put up the generators, nor does its work end when the construction phase is complete. Instead, a large part of the mission is working with forward-thinking local entrepreneurs to hire and train workers and create micro-businesses that will survive and continue working and turning a profit even after Solar Aid's role has ended.

Learn more about Solar Aid microsolar solutions for developing nations

These are only two of the individuals and organizations that have stepped up to help bring solar power to places where it's sorely needed - and will do the most good. Do you know of a person or organization that's doing good work in the field of renewable energy and charity? i want to hear about them so that I can start to maintain an honor roll of solar power and renewble energy charities for those who want to put their money where it will serve a greater purpose.

The Green Pushback

The Green Pushback

by Deb Powers

The Green push back against mass renewable energy has begun - and it's challenging assumptions on many sides. Some folks have called it NIMBYism - but to do so is a bit disingenuous when you consider that many of the people protesting the installation of large scale solar, wind and hydro power plants are not protesting in their own backyards. They are protesting out of genuine concern for the environment. The NIMBY label is far too facile - and it's pre-loaded with negative associations that can be exploited to mow down opposition to plans as easily as the desire for a greener planet can be exploited to make existing energy companies and utilities lots and lots of money.

Let me be clear here - I have nothing against people making money on the green revolution. I think the greening of the world is a good thing. I believe we must move away from the large-scale burning of anything to create power and toward ways of generating electricity that do not put our planet in danger. I also happen to believe that the release of greenhouse gasses is not the be-all and end-all of that danger.

As I've collected news for the reNewsable Today column here at BlogonSmog over the past few months, I've had a growing sense of unease mingled with the excitement of watching a new industry take off. The adoption of green by major utilities - the contracts to build multi-megawatt generating stations - the focus shifting more and more to how much money can be made by investing in green energy companies that generate power for tens of thousands of people - it started striking a discordant note.

I tried to tell myself that it's just my "natural" distrust of corporations - but there's nothing natural about that mistrust. It's been learned over decades of watching and decades of researching how big business does business, and the understanding that the green they're interested in promoting folds nicely into their pockets. There's nothing wrong with that - I have nothing against making money - but over and over throughout history, we've learned that the bigger a corporation gets, the less likely it is that they'll be troubled by little things like killing off local wildlife, poisoning water, making the air unbreathable and ultimately, destroying the planet.

De-Greening Green Energy

It's been a commonly accepted tenet that the green energy movement would not have arrived until we found a way to generate mass quantities of reliable energy via solar, wind, wave or other renewable energy sources - in other words, not until the generation of green energy could be made profitable and attractive to major utilities. We've reached that point - in part because of the need to meet new energy transmision standards. All over the world, major utility companies that have fought tooth and nail against transitioning from coal-fired energy plants to cleaner energy are signing on to green energy initiatives in droves.

And as they do, they're putting the major money they used to use to fight wind, solar and other renewable energies into making large scale renewable energy installations sound like the Land of Milk and Honey. It's all about the New Green Technology which can create green jobs, save the economy and the planet and, presumably, leap tall buildings in a single bound. I can't even start to calculate the amount of advertising money being suddenly poured into ads supporting and touting the generation of clean, green energy as the Holy Grail - and that kind of money makes me nervous about motive - because the motive is usually to make more money, and the method is usually to ignore any inconvenient facts that might impact the ability to make as much money as possible.

Again, let me be clear. I have nothing against making money. In the best of all possible worlds, making green energy, green money and green jobs truly would be a win-win-win solution for everyone. And I honestly believe that sustainable, renewable energy generation and delivery does have the potential to be a win-win-win situation - as long as all the wins are balanced. Unfortunately, the evidence is starting to show that as usual, the profit end of things is heavily weighting its end of the scale, at least when it comes to huge solar and wind energy plants - and to some extent tidal energy plants - that will generate gigawatts of power for masses of people.

The dangers of going green too big

Over the past several weeks, small stories have been appearing in newspapers here and there around the world. At a town meeting, a group of people express concerns about the health problems associated with wind towers situated nearby. A West Virginia town bans hilltop wind towers for aesthetic reasons. An expert on sea life points out that large-scale tidal energy plants disrupt the migration patterns of schools of fish. There are concerns about birds getting caught up in wind turbines, and studies refuting the claim that cite relatively small numbers of birds actually affected. And the one that actually made me sit up and take notice -birds flying into the superheated air above solar concentrator stations and being fried in midair.

Now that's one I hadn't thought of. I've been reading about the plans for super-plants in the Gobi Desert in China and in the Sahara in Africa and in the Mojave in North America - acres and acres of huge mirrors directing the sunlight at towers which use the heat to boil water or heat sand or store it in some other way. These installations could, say the developers, generate enough energy to provide all the power that the whole world needs - we just need to find ways to transmit it.

I'm enough of a tech geek that those installations are beautiful to me - but then, I think wind turbines are aesthetically pleasing, so what do I know? I gave a passing thought to the disruption of the ecology of those regions - but honestly, I don't know enough about it to understand how those mirrors and towers would affect the animal and plant life in the deep deserts. But then I read one small factoid in an article about the green push back - the presence of those mirrors and the concentrated light and heat would warm the air above the solar installations to 800 F. Birds flying into that superheated air would be incinerated.

My concern isn't for the birds so much, though. It's in wondering about the effect of that super-heating on the environment in general. How would it disrupt weather patterns? What would it do to the micro-climate on the ground? How far around the perimeter of the plant would be completely uninhabitable for anything alive? And more pointedly - have we really thought through all the implications of building huge power generation plants?

So we fry a few birds in the process...

Let me digress. I have a friend who is awed and amazed by technology. He believes that man is a marvelous creature who has overcome the adversities of having less muscle, less speed and less natural physical abilities by sheer brain power. He feels that man is majestic, and that those who call for more responsibility in our use of technology are apologists for the human race. As I was reading about the dangers that huge solar mirrors hold for birds, I could hear him in the back of my mind saying, with a shrug, "So we fry a few birds. What's the big deal?"

And that, I suppose, is the attitude that I fear. The ends do not always justify the means and the sacrifice of a few for the greater good is not always an attitude that I espouse. How long before "so we fry a few birds" becomes "so a couple of people get cancer"?

I am not trying to be a naysayer. I support the transition from coal-powered energy to greener forms of energy - but more and more, I find myself favoring distributed energy generation over centralized energy installations - solar panels over desert power stations, half a dozen wind turbines to power a neighborhood, a driveway that collects solar for use in the house.

The problem with individual adoption of solar, wind and other renewable energy forms is that it will not be profitable on a large scale for the major players in the energy sweepstakes. It will generalize and spread profits to multiple manufacturers of renewable energy equipment for residential, retail and industrial use - but it will not supply an ongoing market for generated energy by central players. Without the promise of that steady stream of income, many of the investors who are stepping up with wallets in hand would melt away into the woodwork.

More reading about the green energy push back

 When Locals Push Back

Pros and cons of wind farms

Turbines may hurt local wildlife

Environmentalists clash