Off the Grid

[keith]

African Huts Far From the Grid Glow With Renewable Power
www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/science/earth/25fossil.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a2

More than a year ago Dave & I discovered our mutual ownership of the 70's classic "Mother Earth's Handbook of Homemade Power" and discussed the lack of practicality of some of the projects.

Now from the Times an article about a combination of need, ingenuity and Chineese manufacturing making homemade power practical in the developing world.

[Dave]

Terrific!

Hey, I wonder what ever happened to the idea someone was working on twenty years ago to produce amorphous crystals for solar electric production. It was supposed to lower the generation cost by 90% or some such figure!

[keith]

You can buy them in a lot of places including Amazon
www.amazon.com/Sunforce-50042-50-Watt-Amorphous-Solar/dp/B001U7VN4E
or other retailers
www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&expIds=17259,27585&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=solar+power+amorphous&cp=14&qe=c29sYXIgcG93ZXIgYW1v&qesig=2pXD0OH7dMw6nvCE-pzvFQ&pkc=AFgZ2tnJszQYgh9Oge2hCjKQUpaGbTYKwKZJ3CvszSt3dvKTRYy2sQb91pOR9OIAC7I-p0uBwjlyZIb8EKbi83mHRsAUes3NnQ&wrapid=tljp1293483545937022&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=12958960595169194900&ei=-v0YTZHwJcP_lgeu5_H9Bw&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=5&sqi=2&ved=0CDoQ8wIwBA#

In the US we still seem to be chasing the goal of a price match with coal generated electricity on the grid, a very tough nut to crack.

I remember working on an off-grid project years ago (marine bouy, maybe/). With that one the price, weight & longevity were the killers.

Another proposal I enjoyed working on was solar powered Christmas decorations. A quick search reveals that the same people who make the solar powered walkway lights also have those available. I'm glad I'm not trying to compete making stuff in NY anymore. (I'll bet their batteries don't work well in zero degree weather, though).

[dicknaegele]

Coal burning plants and the pursuit of "clean coal technology" needs to be rethought. Coal companies here in Appalachia are using "Mountain Top Removal Mining" to access the coal. It is a horrible assault on our environment and on the beautiful mountains that took millions of years to form.

Mountain top removal mining involves blasting the top off of a mountain and pushing the waste, or "overburden" as they call it, into the valleys, covering up streams, destroying animals and animal habitat.

If anyone has traveled through the Appalachians of W. Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee have seen the irreplaceable beauty of those mountains, and to picture those mountains being flattened and left with nothing but sparse grass and brush growing out of poorly restored land with little or no topsoil.

I am a proponent of going back to nuclear power and more windpower. Coal has brought us the acid rain from the midwest into the beautiful Adirondacks, killing the fish in the lakes and streams. Try to envision Mt Marcy or Whiteface mountain with it's top knocked off, and the valleys around it filled with trees, stumps and fill, simply pushed into the valleys with dozers, filling in streams and causing environmental havoc.

We need to either develop "off the grid" sources in sufficient quantity or at least clean up what is generated "on the grid".

Sorry to ramble, but I am not one concerned about the cost of power as much as I am on what we are sacrificing environmentally to generate that power.

[Dave]

Yup, it will take a higher cost for the power we get today to match the cost of most alternatives, or so I've read. I remember back in the 1970's when solar and wind, etc. seemed real possibilities until oil prices dropped and put alternative power sources out of the running.