Good day, sunshine!
It’s a lovely sunny day today, in Wellington at least, which means there’s loads of solar energy out there just begging to be harnessed. And while greater reliance on solar energy is frequently dismissed by “haters and wreckers” as unfeasible, unrealistic, or not technologically advanced enough, it seems that there are people out there who are making solar energy very nicely, thank you very much, and just waiting for the political will to turn in favour of what they have been doing for years.
Hat tip to BJ Chip for the link to this story, which details one such company, Solel, who are producing solar energy as cheaply as gas-powered plants.
While George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech, which highlighted the need to look for renewable energy sources, may have been made for purely self-interested reasons of concern at the price of oil, rather than genuine concern for the environment, if the net effect is that companies like Solel are thrown into the spotlight, it has to be a good thing.
February 16th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Thank you BJ and Frog,
That is encouraging reading.
Today in the Wairarapa it is utterly glorious with a cool early morning and now a great day for promoting solar energy.
As owner occupiers of an ex state house perhaps it is time we stopped wishing we could do something about solar options and instead looked for realistic solutions.
Thank you both. Joy.
February 16th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Surely thats the point though - people act out of self interest, and getting the incentives right for that will help the environement (as it helps everything else). Bush signalled a move away from oil because it is the US’ interest to do so. Who really cares why he did it; it’s happening. Or allegedly so.
The reality is, apart from the few odds and sods who vote Green (leaving aside the Wadestown Mums, the pot heads, and the hard-core socialists in the party), hardly anybody else cares about the enviornment _for its own sake_.
February 16th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Something I find interesting is that if, as many are predicting, global warming will cause more extreme weather, surely that gives us a lot more potential
for wind and wave power?
- Colin
February 16th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
“Bush signalled a move away from oil because it is the US’ interest to do so. Who really cares why he did it; it’s happening. Or allegedly so.”
Oh really - you obviously aren’t paying much attention then.
SOTU - “we’re addicted to oil ..and will cut ME imports by 75%”
Next day “he didn’t mean it literally”.
February 16th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
This is good stuff. With people like James Lovelock and Jesse Ausobel talking up nuclear energy as our only savior, its a pleasant surprise to see solar getting a boost.
February 17th, 2006 at 8:35 am
I saw a new scientist article about domestic wind turbines that you can literally just plug into a power socket and start generating power. Oh, for the day that these babies are on sale at Mitre 10.
February 17th, 2006 at 11:30 am
I been tell that Chipper again that he read them science article he gets hisself into a load of trouble probable end up in ACT or something get a medallion prize,
February 17th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Solar water heating is definitely a good bet now.
A woman here at work had a solar water heater installed for around $7000 and has had her electricity bill go down from $270 a month to $120.
That’s a payback in about 4 or 5 years.
Hopefully ours will be installed in the next week or so and we can still reap some of the benefits from the remains of the summer.
February 17th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
http://bbc.cpdn.org/index.php
What does the experiment do?
The experiment adds the processing power of your home or office computer to thousands of others to predict climate change. The same model that the Met Office uses to make daily weather forecasts has been adapted by climateprediction.net to run on home PCs.
The model incorporates many variable parameters, allowing thousands of sets of conditions. Your computer will run one individual set of conditions – in effect your individual version of how the world’s climate works – and then report back to the climateprediction.net team what it calculates.
I just dowloaded this and thought it might be of interest
ciao thomas
February 20th, 2006 at 12:22 am
Seeing most of our electricity comes from cheap clean hydro, I think we should start using solar energy instead for transportation, using the solar panels that have been around for billions of years- plants. IOW we should start growing solar transportation fuel- i.e. biodiesel and ethanol crops to blend with dino oil. The sooner NZ can cut its 80% reliance on middle eastern crude oil the better.
IMHO photovoltaic solar panels or collectors are (currently) too expensive and of only limited use (i.e. sunny areas with no grid connection). Wind would be a better investment for bulk electricity generation. And biodiesel and ethanol crops can be put in NOW, very cheaply, with no downside if they don’t work out. More bang for the buck and all.
February 20th, 2006 at 11:22 am
uk_kiwi,
You may like to take a look at this document from EECA.
However, biofuels are not a panacea to our oil addiction. They will not scale to provide the quantities of fuel being consumed daily. Instead our energy future will consist of a patchwork of various distributed sources along with a vast increase in our smartness about how we use the more expensive quantities available.
“While you’re reading, also check out George Monbiot’s article on the EU biodiesel requirements: the net result of which will be to add extra carbon to the atmosphere. The law of unintended consequences can bite in strange places indeed !”
February 20th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Yes, it’s true. Give those Greedy Capitalists suitable price signals and what do they go and do? Invent/commercialise a whole bunch of useful stuff, sell it to us, and - (gasp) - ward off the catastrophe de jour!
February 20th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Unfortunately that domestic wind turbines story is premiun content only. boo hiss
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18124343.800.html
February 21st, 2006 at 3:35 pm
People will only use solar power and wind power when it becomes cheap enough to do so or other forms of energy becomes relatively more expensive.
This is the free-market at work
February 21st, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Waymad, you are way too optimistic about money buying the things that money can’t buy. Capitalists respond to proven needs… and they are absolutely abysmal, totally lousy, at prediction and anticipation further out than the end of the next quarterly report. The climate change has at least a 30 year lag in it… it has to be fixed NOW or the tide rises THEN… but the signal that the Capitalists will respond to is only the rising tide… too late by a generation.
No amount of money will buy back the years lost to the neocon theocracy in Washington. My patience is thin these days… too busy by half to be here.
Mark, you can take the same message, more gently put. “The invisible hand also kills”, and the free market is efficient only in respect to things that HAVE happened, not with respect to those that well. It works most wonderously well to distribute goods and services in real time in the limited environs where something like a free and fair market can exist.
The energy market currently is neither free nor fair, and there are an awful lot of bombs and bullets flying around to ensure that it remains firmly in control of the folks who currently control it. To sustain the illusion of free and fair market activity requires either some really strong s^^t or nearly complete control of the news media.
I pointed out a few days ago, the difference between the US and the International versions of CNN. On one, the story about the more rapid melting of the Greenland Ice cap. On the other, a story about a Dominatrix being charged with murder of her client. I leave you to guess which was where.
BJ