They say wind turbines are where the renewable money is, but I don't know. Judging from all the solar power activity among the pious, I'd want to invest in photovoltaics. First there's the news that 80 per cent of Amish homes in one Ohio county already have solar arrays on their roof. Then the Vatican decides to replace the cement panels on the Paul VI Auditorium with PV panels. Hmmm....
The greening of the pope is easy enough to understand. The Vatican has always been a political institution and public relations is a big part of RC strategy. But the world's largest Amish community? Well, it turns out that solar power is by far the lesser of any number of evils for those who have turned their backs on most modern technologies.
Government transportation codes require lights on all vehicles, including horse-drawn buggies, according to a New Scientist blog post. And something has to charge the batteries, so why not a technology that at least frees one from relying on the evil and unreliable "English" electricity grid? Get this:
The equipment has become so prevalent that Green Energy Ohio is organizing an Amish Country tour during the American Solar Energy Society's 36th annual convention, July 7-12, in Cleveland.
Of course, once you've got all those high-tech panels on your roof -- and you've wired your place for simple 12VDC -- hooking up more lights, sewing and washing machines, etc. is an inexpensive no brainer. It's a slippery slope, though. Can Amish IPods be far behind?
In a bizarre sidenote, Garrison Keeler also sees the relevance of what's going on among the Luddites. Writing in Salon he suggests "You look at the Amish and you see the past but you might also be looking at the future." Unfortunately, his is a simplistic analysis, one that wanders off into a bizarre non-sequitur on the sweetness of rhubarb crisp. He worries that "our great-grandchildren may end up learning to live the subsistence life" thanks to our failure to accept the peril of climate change.
That may yet come to pass, what with yet another refusal today by the current American president to embrace the idea of binding greenhouse gas emission targets. But I'd say the real lesson to be gleaned from the Amish is that sometimes a good idea is too good to pass up -- if you're clever enough to recognize one for what it is.
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Actually, once your house is wired for 12VDC, hooking up sewing machines, washing machines, etc. is NOT an inexpensive no-brainer. For starters, you'd probably have to rewire everything as I can't imagine the 12VDC wiring needed to charge some batteries would meet US electrical code for household AC distribution. No one's going out and installing 12/3 romex to charge some buggy light batteries. Then there's the DC/AC inverters. I wouldn't expect a switch-over any time soon.
But, PV seem to be on the verge of making some technological breakthroughs in the areas of efficiency and cost of manufacture (see Scientific American, April 2007).
I've always maintained that the roof of every house is a solar collector waiting to happen.
You can of course also use the sun for hot water heating, by passing water through tubes in a small greenhouse of a box.
The company I work for makes insulation for, amongst other purposes, single crystal silicon furnaces used by PV manufacturers. Nobody foresees a downturn in the market for PV silicon in the next few years, and it has been growing for the past 3 or 4 years at quite a rate.
The usual way to use photovoltaics is not to wire up everything for 12V, but to use an inverter. You charge batteries with the solar (you don't run things directly from a solar panel -- some folks mistakenly think you do) then hook the inverter to the batteries to convert to 120 or 240 or whatever you're using. It's a pretty simple setup, and very reliable -- we've been using solar on our RV for 10 years (much more expensive back then) and even with a vehicle which bounces about going down the road, the whole thing is very reliable and simple.
It used to be that RVers would do a lot of rewiring to 12v, because inverters then were expensive and really inefficient (like less than 50% efficient). That's gone by the boards except for tinkerers.
How water solar -- directly heating water -- is also easy and reliable, if you're somewhere where you don't have to worry about freezing. Did that in the house in Calif 25 years ago and it knocked the hot water bill down to practically nothing. You can also use a hot water system with antifreeze for house heating, which usually uses a large tank for storage of the heated water which you circulate later. These hot water setups can be done pretty easily yourself if you're handy, but most people would probably be better off buying panels. The hot water with antifreeze house heating can be good even in pretty cold places with sunny winters, like the northern midwest USA and the prairies in Canada.
Samll windmills are handy too. Something you sometimes see with RVs in long stay places, like the American SW, although they're handier for boats, or a house in any windy area.
Also, the roof as solar area. Sacramento's utility company has a program which sets up solar on people's roofs and ties it to the main system. This is a good way to do things (IMO) because one "problem" for solar and wind in many places is the political problem -- it really works pretty nicely as small setups and not so well scaled up to massive power plants. Power companies don't like that, but the Sacramento method seems like a good way to make it workable within a power company structure.
As far a i understand it, the hot water systems here in the UK use flexible tubing that won't break when the water inside freezes. Of course this adds to the cost, but means less maintenance issues. Certainly such systems can be found even here in the central belt in Scotland.
Small scale wind is not as much of a panacea as I'd like, due simply to the need for areas with high constant wind speeds. you do not necessarily get that in towns or sheltered villages. (What do you know, our ancestors were so intelligent they build villages in sheltered valleys out of the wind!) We can however get great savings out of energy efficiency.
It depends on how hard the freeze is. In the northern midwest USA and prairie Canada you get temps way below freezing... way WAY below. In Calif we had relatively non-flexible plastic pipe and the tiny bit of freezing we had was no problem, and actually similiar plastic pipe in our RV hasn't broken in some pretty bad freezes. I wouldn't trust it to withstand a northern midwest winter though.
I don't see any of these as panaceas. Better they get used in combination with each other when possible. You get some sun power, a little extra from wind power, water if you're lucky enough to have a suitable stream. In fact that's one of the things I have a pet peeve about, because when you mention these techs some folks will jump in a say it doesn't solve everything. As if any one tech would. As if we've ever used all of one form of tech to create electricity everywhere anyway. Why not combine whenever possible?
The biggest problem I see with wind (assuming you have some wind -- and it doesn't have to be all the time, see above :) is that the available small wind units are pretty expensive. Tinkerers can make good ones fairly cheap, but that's relatively few people. The various solar tech options, OTOH, have been getting cheaper and cheaper and are really pretty simple to set up.
thanks