Get Energy Smart! NOW!

A key challenge for wind and solar systems is intermittency. The wind isn’t always blowing and the sun isn’t always shining.  But, in many parts of the world, this presents an opportunity for complementary systems — as the wind is often blowing when the sun is not at peak and vice versa.  Combining these systems can enable higher probabilities of providing year-round power while (potentially) requiring lower storage.

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Once a week, my alarm clock is truly unnecessary … the rumblings of the trash truck, with the loud squealing of braking with the roar of acceleration between driveways, ensure that I won’t sleep late that morning.  For awhile, I’ve been wondering why hybrid technologies aren’t making into those garbage trucks. While regenerative braking would hopefully cut down on the noise, at least I would be woken up by the ‘glorious sound of energy efficiency in the morning’.  Bit by bit, that hoped-for day is approaching.

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So, while happily wandering the web, half-watching the TV, on comes a ReMax ad.  What are the buyers looking for? An energy efficiency home … one with renewable energy, solar, wind, and methane … “Well,” the wife says, standing right next to the tail end of a cow, “maybe not methane.” Of course, this being ReMax, the ad ends with this couple happily enscounced in their beautiful, energy efficent, renewable energy powered home.

Raleigh, North Carolina, is setting out to see whether it can go all LED for its lighting. The initial effort will go into a parking lot, where they see a 2-3 year payback period.  After that, they will move to streetlights.  Now, CFLs/fluorescents are several multiples in price to incandescent bulbs.   LEDs are often an order of magnitude more expensive than the fluorescent.  But, in addition to the power savings (CFLs use about 26% of incandescent’s electrical requirements; LEDs up about 20% of CFLs, or about 5% of incandescent bulb’s requirements), there are also the savings from fewer lightbulb replacements and the near destructibility of LEDs. (Pretty hard for a kid with a BB gun to knock them out.) [Read more →]

Congressman Tom Udall (D-NM) just introduced House Bill 969 which, to put one to sleep like all good legislation,

proposes to “amend title VI of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to establish a Federal renewable energy portfolio standard for certain retail electric utilities and for other purposes.”

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One of the key Energize America principles is to strive to

Make the right choice the easy choice.

Right now, throughout the United States, structural issues of regulation, financing, taxation policy, and otherwise make it difficult for individuals, businesses, communities, and governments (at all levels) to make the right choice when it comes to holistic approaches to energy choices.  Home Owner Associations (HOAs) ban solar power; tax policy favors deducting energy costs now versus longer-term deductions of building improvements to reduce energy use; purchase and operations budgets are separated, hindering investment in better quality purchases that lower long-term operating costs; and so on …

What creates these disincentives and what might be done to change the situation? Two recent studies from Top Line Strategy offer some insights when it comes to solar power.

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Ergosphere is the blog space of a very thought-provoking blogger on energy issues, Engineer Poet.  EP will show up and comment throughout the blogosphere on energy issues — with a thoughtful and critical eye, without question a pointed barb for calling out BS when perceived as BS.  But, perhaps more interesting, EP raises interesting concepts and thoughts — ones that are achievable (at least technologically), often outside the mainstream of consideration, and that could revolutionize man’s energy system-of-systems.  This makes Ergosphere a must-stop blog — on an occasional (several times / month) basis.

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One of the best know stories of solar power — a true story — is how, in 1986, Ronald Reagan had the solar hot water panels taken off the White House roof. Panels that Jimmy Carter had had installed.  This was a symbolic culmination of the cut-off of tax incentives and drastic cut-backs in research support to solar that devastating America’s leading position in the solar industry.

Well, another symbolic act might occur in Washington come Fiscal Year 2008.

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