Green Energy

When it comes to green energy solar seems to be the panacea.  It is limitless and at current standards works but with the improvement of batteries and collector technology it seems the sky is the limit.  For solar to be successful though we have to have a paradigm shift.

Currently the solar technology push is following the old tried and true.  In a central location build a massive array of equipment and collect as much energy as possible and then distribute it for a profit.  There are so many things wrong with this they are too many to mention but I will cover a couple.  The biggest is that it requires upgrades to our aging electrical grids, the other is a insane amount of real-estate it take to make a centralized collection facility.

For solar to work is it has to be a distributed and specifically decentralized system where much smaller collection systems are used right at the location where the power is needed.  The advantages to this are huge.  The largest economic advantage is that is requires zero upgrades to the grid.  As a matter of fact it greatly reduces load on the grid making it much more dependable.

This system requires collectors on every house and building along with batteries and some rewiring.  When there is no sun light you will still want to be on the grid for backup.  In most municipalities the local utility is required to buy back your excess power so that is even an attractive notion as well.

Back to the grid for a moment though.  Think about a large neighborhood.  Let’s say for discussion purposes that exactly 25% of the houses face each of the four directions and they don’t want to look at the ugly collectors on the roofs so they have to be placed on the back of the house.  During part of the day you may not have a perfect angle but during the other part you will and during some seasons it will be better for one house than another but they are all right across the street from each other.

When your house is at the perfect angle you are creating more than you need and your neighbor is getting the excess others generate or at least a little sip from the grid if his is not at the right angle.  In this model power does not have to be transmitted across huge ugly lines from one end of the country to the other because most of the poser is generated locally.

This is the solar model of the future.