Results tagged “solar” from Green Mesh

I watched a solar panel installation on a Springfield Township home by ASCOM Electric of Dover, Pa. today.

It's an interesting relationship between industry and home businesses.

To live off the grid using solar power is impractical in Pennsylvania. We don't get enough sun and battery storage is expensive and has a shelf life of about five years.

However, using the existing power grid as your "battery" is a very efficient way to buffer your personal power source and feed back into the grid during times of peak demand.

For the electrical utility, as well as other taxpayers who pay for tax credits, these solar home businesses help add watt by watt to the renewable content of the larger power grid.

After an eight year payoff for this system, the rest of the 25+ year lifespan of the system means a profit for the home solar business.

The system will produce 9.8 kilowatts during peak sunshine.

Aztec Solar Power, a solar applications manufacturer based in King of Prussia, is planning to open a local plant, to Springettbury Township a company official said Monday.

The plant will create 100 jobs.

inyork.com/ydr

Jay McGinnis' inconspicuous house near New Park, Pa. is an experiment of alternative energy.

The windmills produce compressed air and electricity. The innovative air compressing wind mill stores the air throughout the farm using underground lines that act as a reservoir taking on air when the wind blows.

The solar panels on the garage heat water. The solar panels on the workshop generate electricity that is sold back to Adams Electric Cooperative Inc. Instead of using expensive batteries, McGinnis sells the solar electricity back to Adams Electric during times of peak sun (and demand in Summer) and supplements the farms' electricity when the sun isn't shining.

The hopper at right holds corn burned in the outdoor furnace that pipes hot water back to the living spaces. The wood that also feeds his boiler is grown on his property.

The 3-cylinder 2005 Honda Insight has consumed an average of 55 mpg over it's service life. The vehicles hybrid system recovers energy from braking and supplements it's tiny gasoline engine with an electric motor and batteries. The shape of the car, fender skirts and other design features of the quirky 1999-2005 Insight was capable of squeezing out 124 mpg by one hypermiling competition.

McGinnis believes that our fossil fueled world is in big trouble and we all need to do anything to use less.

McGinnis' business, The Woolen Mill Fan Company, creates reproductions of water motor fans. The parts cast in Central Pennsylvania by an Amish foundry bears the unusual mark of something produced in the United States.

A few days ago I posted Jimmy Carter's solar panels shine in the movie "W"

The panels, installed on the White House by Carter in 1977 (along with a wood stove below) during that oil crisis, were an example set by leadership illustrating to the populous that they should move away from oil. The panels were removed in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan who was more of a let the free market work as it will guy. The money went with oil.

Solar panels returned to the White House in 2002.

In the 1870s and 80s, many scientists feared exhaustion of coal reserves.

"One must not believe, despite the silence of modern writings, that the idea of using solar heat for mechanical operations is recent. On the contrary, one must recognize that this idea is very ancient and its slow development across the centuries it has given birth to various curious devices." -- Augustine Mouchot, 1878, at the Universal Exposition, Paris, France.

An interesting review of solar history by Radford University, Radford, Va. with many pictures.

• Abel Pifre, Mouchot's assistant, set up a solar engine to print The Solar Journal in 1880.
• John Ericsson , inventor of the ironclad ship USS Monitor during the Civil War, believed solar engines would be needed in the future.
• American engineer Frank Schuman built a practical industrial scale solar plant at Meadi, Egypt in 1910.
• 1982-1988 If someone had said, "Build the world's biggest technological turkey to prove that solar power doesn't really work," the Solar One plant is the one they would have built.

I went to see the movie "W" last night. Whether you love or hate George W. Bush, it's an interesting movie that digs into G.W. as a human being and not our usual view from the press release or a suited podium puppet.

The movie is fresh with a blend of recent history, so news junkies like myself can melt their own experience and research with the depiction of the producer.

I tried to gauge the crowd. They were all older. I tired to gauge the reaction. It was neutral.

I thought I might feel anger, but I only felt pity and a bond in that we are all products of our parents, experiences and people's expectations; objectivity is sometimes the ability to see past these.

During the movie there was a passing mention (jab) at Jimmy Carter's White House solar panels.

During the 1970's, Carter was dealing with the effects of an Arab oil crisis and was seeking ways to wean us from foreign oil. Carter had some success in reducing the U.S. dependency on foreign oil.

Carter lost re-election to Ronald Reagan in 1980. The solar panels eventually came down in 1986 and the solar research program was gutted by the Reagan administration. Those same solar panels were in operation at Unity College in Unity, Maine for 12 more years.

The college drove an old school bus down to drove Franconia, VA, to liberate them from a General Services Administration warehouse.

They placed 16 of them on their cafeteria roof in 1992, and used them to provide hot water for 12 years. unity.edu A few were used in experiments by students.

Solar energy returned to the White House in 2002 with a grid of 167 solar panels on the roof of a maintenance shed that has been delivering electricity to the White House grounds. Another solar installation has been helping to provide hot water. Yet another has been heating the water in the presidential pool. nytimes.com

I had never heard that the White House currently had solar power until I did some research here. It appears that it was publicized more by the solar industry than the president.

How cool would it be if the White House was a "shining city upon a hill" to the world. A visible symbol of independent energy.

John Winthrop, a pilgrim who arrived in a rickety wooden boat, coined the phrase when he described the America he imagined (reaganlibrary.com); a home that would be free from the restraints of the world he had known.

Rep. Todd Platts, R-York County, voted with his fellow Republicans against the (energy) bill, calling it an example of "what is wrong with Washington."

Instead of addressing the interest of all Americans, Platts said the bill would continue to prohibit drilling in the locations where most of the oil and natural gas can be found. inyork.com/ydr 08/18/08

And in about 7+ years when this oil and gas hits the global market (a free and open oil market) where the value is controlled by those who have most of the oil (OPEC), the price effect will be nothing. The thirst by developing nations will continue to pressure that market and will only be more severe in following decades.

Oil is a dead end. The cry for drilling will continue until the day we run out and then there will be panic for a solution.

What is wrong with Washington is that it has allowed it's vision to be powered by whatever the monopoly is of the time.

What is wrong with Washington is that we should have been building a national resource of renewable energy decades ago so we wouldn't be so controlled by this mess now.

What is wrong with Washington is that it lacks innovative heroes who can dig through the think of the crowd, the flow of money, and look beyond the rhetoric of the day to the survival of future generations.

Congress' earlier attempts this year to renew wind, and solar tax credits, with a measure proposing higher taxes on the oil and gas industry to pay for it have been shot down.

"It's pretty remarkable. ... Wind turbines are used in political ads, yet we stand on the verge of not extending the credit which supports the growth of the largest-growing sector of the utility and energy area in the country," - Hunter Armistead, head of renewable energy for Babcock & Brown, the private-equity firm with 20 U.S. wind farms generating 1,600 megawatts wsj.com

House approves offshore drilling with alternatives, drillers revolt - greenmesh 9/08

HSL technology uses rooftop, 4-ft-wide mirrored dishes that track the sun with the help of a GPS receiver. The collector focuses the sunlight onto 127 optical fibers. The fibers, which can be thought of as flexible light pipes, are connected to hybrid light fixtures that have special diffusion rods that spread out the light in all directions. One collector powers about eight hybrid light fixtures--which can illuminate about 1,000 square feet. /www.ornl.gov

Energy from the sun is piped directly from the sun to where it's needed. Think of combining traditional electrically powered high efficiency lighting with a solar source. In full sun, the electrical l lighting could be scaled back while in darkness used 100% or dimmed back as required.