Green electricity

There is no way green energy can provide base load power.

At best it will be supplementary.

Not all green power is as environmentally harmless as it is made out to be.

For example: if a major city was to be powered entirely by solar power (assuming the enrgy storage problems could be overcome to allow this), some side effects would be:

1. An area of ground would be shaded and unable to satisfactorily grow anything. If this was on a roof top it would be no problem, but generally industry uses too much power to restrict collectors to the roof.

2. The temperature of the panels themselves would be raised well above ambient, even further than most roofs. On a large enough scale, this will heat the air locally and change the city air circulation, ie the local climate will be changed.

Applied to a really large city, this local climate change will affect a much larger area than the city itself.

At the moment, we get away with it because the technology is basically small scale, with plenty of other space around the panels to mitigate their effects.

Your arguments about the side effects of solar power are sort of lobe-sided; the arguments I think fail when put in a comparative context.

Consider for instance that Strip Mining of coal makes portions of the land not useable for growing anything as well, and for as long as the strip mining goes on. This compares to your side-effect (SE) #1

The ambient air heating effect is of consideration only if the solar panel is designed to extract just the optical radiant energy; yet a solar panel designed to extract both the optical and thermal radiant energies would not have SE #2

Effectively we will have no worse-off side effects at all from the use of solar power, when you think of it.

Dear editorgbanalysts,

I like your concept. Know of any links to solar panel manufacturers or suppliers that are cooled by water coils in close contact to them? Water cooled manifolds in line with water heaters or steam plant pre-heaters would greatly reduce the energy needed to create those products and a cooler solar cell is more efficient than one allowed to heat to its ambient heat re-radiation temperature, as well.

Right now I would say that I do not know anyone or any company doing that, though there may be one. However, I should stay in touch because we are looking to develop similar technology beginning about March 2009, based on a design I had made some years back.

While it will be a year or two more before multi-junction photo voltaic systems can go mainstream, making that form somewhat competitive with other electrical generation systems; focused array roof top systems that heat sodium mixed water and readily store their excess energy underground or in basements, for heat exchange to fluorocarbon powered turbine generators are off the shelf and already cost competitive with other forms of turbine generation systems SO LONG AS THE ECONOMIES OF SCALE are observed. (i.e., not workable for one home sized systems). These systems must use expensive stainless piping, which is why a small system cannot hope to pay its own way. Otherwise - going green with solar generators is already a fact for a number of green high rise and sky scraper construction projects (check out some of the latest construction going on in the Big Apple, NY or Big D, TX.).

In point of fact - solar cell electrical systems can pay their way if you prorate their contribution to one's over-all use of energy. The best compromise is to stay connected to the grid, however. Those systems, if correctly sized usually pay for themselves in about 8 years if one keeps up on maintenance and uses common sense in their operation. Batteries and low voltage conversion systems are primarily only practical in rural areas that have no grid to store their excess energy into. Battery life is a major contributor to the expense of non-grid connected PV systems, in my opinion.

The on going process of producing systems capable of supporting an individual complex, compound and buildings is a credible endeavor.

The real question is should we continue developing commercial and residential conditions which do not allow green electricity to excel?

Dear Bwire,

Emphatically no! I've been in several round robin discussions with my local municipality over their insistence on sticking with the National Building Codes as their model for building code enforcement. (Their old guard wants our city to be an All American City.). The problem is that the energy model for an All American City has aesthetic and other hidden codes that kill alternative energy production within city lines. A horizontal helix wind turbine on a roof top while bird fiendly, very quiet, and looking like mobile art while immune to overspeeding and okay with the turbulance around cities, doesn't meet the minimum visual requirments that All American Cities require. Therefore one cannot get a permit to place one on top of their house or business to reduce their personal carbon footprint.

Likewise for solar cell or focused solar generation systems. It's more than somewhat apparent that 25 year plans and hidden agendas in most metropolitan areas need to be dug out and aired out before any real progress can be made to modernize our municipalities. Hidding a solar array inside a roof top parapite on a school or fire station does not autmatically mean that the great unwashed paying taxes in that same city won't hit a stone wall when they attempt to join the 21st century.

Perhaps the City Managers are worried that wind may blow these attachments off the roofs someday and hurt someone. Then, of course, it may also be that the Land Barons of yester-years help enact those codes at a time the Barons were investing in "centralized" power generation systems, which means that under those codes everybody from those towns had to be on the grid for them (the Barons) to recoup their investments and also get decent returns.

It may not enough but it will surly support our today energy need and we can reduce the co2 emmissions in atmosphere.i want to ask that how will you produce green electricity.what are you thinking about generation of electricity.................