By Josh

Shalom/Hello/Vanakam/Mahalo Sadhana Foresters !!!

Hope all is well and fascinating wherever you are in the globe. I’m going to do a run of posts here where I focus on a specific topic, and post some links where you can read more about the subject if you like.

Solar energy has the alluring potential to be a clean, plentiful, and utterly renewable way to power humanity’s existence. If only 0.3% of the United States’ land mass were covered in solar panels (in a desert region, where sun output is the highest), America could harness the amount of electricity that it annually consumes. There are, of course, environmental ( some of the chemicals used to produce current, conventional solar cells are very toxic and create intensive greenhouse gases to boot ), technological (current, top-level solar technology only operates at 10-15% of true efficiency), and climactic  (where I live and was raised,Seattle,The Sun often lies comfortably tucked behind the clouds) hurdles that humanity must overcome when producing and siting solar power projects. Yet, The Sun is and will be one of humanity’s greatest sources of energy as we Earthly beings continue to spin ’round and ’round it- with the caveat that the transition from fossil-fuel to clean-energy driven societies will require the usage of fossil fuels for many of our new technologies (if we can’t shut down coal plants immediately, lets make them as efficient and waste-free as possible in the interim!).

Concentrated solar power (CSP), or solar thermal, is a promising, proven and potentially very critical energy technology that could allow us to eliminate billions of tons of fossil-fuel derived greenhouse gas emissions. Very basically, The Sun’s UV rays strike mirrors- often shaped like parabolas- which concentrate the sunlight into attached tubing that holds a heat-absorbing material such as molten salt. The material, which can also be liquid in nature, is heated to a temperature where steam is created. The steam, in turn,drives a turbine that allows the production of clean electricity (another solar’ farm’ model places thousands of parabolic mirrors around a tower that holds the heat-absorbing material and onto which the mirrors focus the UV rays on the tower to generate heat). As well, because of the ability of the liquid/molten salt/ other kind of substance within the tubing to hold heat, it can be stored for later use (for example,when the sun has gone down or high electricity demand means more kinds of electricity need to be utilized) to create electricity for residential and commercial areas. For a fascinating and detailed piece on the history and potential for solar thermal technology see here: Joe Romm is awesome!!

Let me be very clear: I do not think that massive solar farms in the deserts of the world should be humanity’s main source of power. Nor do I think they should be even the main apparatus for transforming The Sun’s energy into electricity. Distributed forms of solar power- that is, solar installations located on commercial and residential rooftops and throughout communities generally-  provide for localized electricity production and eliminate the need for high-voltage, long range transmission lines to carry the electricity from remote locations. This article highlights a recent distributed solar energy project agreed to by a utility in California. I believe that the more local- of anything!- the better for the surrounding communities. Yet, solar thermal plants can and should be a very crucial element of the world’s energy production portfolios, along with appropriate wind, tidal, geothermal, biomass, waste, etc. energies.

A couple other cool pieces of info: the government of India has called for 20,000 MW of solar power for the country by 2022. This would allow for the powering of millions of homes and business in a near-pollution free manner (including in the many parts of the country that still lack electricity) and would allow for many jobs to be created in the construction, operation, and maintenance of the solar panels.

And, with regards to the mention above of toxic materials in conventional solar panels: Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have discovered a way to create biodegradable solar cells from tobacco plants.Yes, tobacco! Read more here.

Less cancer, more solar!!

Love for now-

Josh

Tags: Solar energy