Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Gibson Mill prides itself on being entirely off-grid, with 100% of its electricity, heating and water sourced on site. Electrical power is from water turbines and a 4kW solar photovoltaic array, water comes from a spring on the estate and heating is provided by a biomass (wood) boiler, using wood exclusively sourced on site.
I have not kept it secret that I’m a fan of solar power. Leaving storage hangups aside for now, the fact that the scale of available power is comfortably gigantic, that perfectly efficient technology exists, that it’s hard-over on the reality axis (vs. fantasy: it’s producing electricity on my roof right now), and that it works well almost everywhere—what’s not to like? Did you trip over that last part? Many do. In this post, we’ll look at just how much solar yield one may expect as a function of location within the U.S.
Lower oil and US gas prices saw Q2 profits down at most of the oil majors, though Exxon recorded another record quarterly profit of $15.9 billion due to asset sales…
In one of the poorest countries on the planet a renewable energy service company is installing one thousand solar home systems – a day. Not in its capital or busy urban centers, but where 80 percent of the population lives – in rural Bangladesh. The company, Grameen Shakti, literally translates as rural energy. By the end of the year it will have installed a total of one million solar systems and now has expansion plans to install five million systems by 2015. Shakti is succeeding where business as usual has failed, and in the year of Sustainable Energy for All, it’s a success story we should all know by heart.
Today’s article is the 5th and final installment of my graphical look at the recently released 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. This article looks at the explosive growth of renewable energy, but also places it in the context of our overall energy demands.
-James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won’t Save Us
-Power by the People
-Nuclear power vs. people power
-Breakthrough Material for Carbon Capture Developed
-Effect of Global Warming on U.S. Energy Consumption
-The missing link to a $7 billion market
I have made repeated references in past posts to the modest off-grid photovoltaic (PV) system I built to cover a large share of our—again modest—electricity usage. By popular demand, I’ll take you on a tour of the system: its history, its composition, and adaptation to my house.
– The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER… (from HBO)
– John Perkins: Occupy the Dam: Brazil’s Indigenous Uprising
– Appalachia Turns on Itself (over coal)
– ‘Deep Green Resistance’ — how not to build a movement
In many former industrially important cities in the United States and around the world, solid old buildings stand empty — useless. But one green innovator is proving that such structures could instead be off-the-grid, zero emission urban food oases.
Only the oil industry would now have the audacity once again to peddle a story that it has gotten wrong for more than a decade as if it were brand new. Enlisting the media and its army of paid consultants, the industry is once again telling the public that oil abundance is at hand. And, what is doubly audacious is that it is promoting this tale as oil prices hover at levels more than eight times the 1999 low.
Oil prices rose this week as geopolitical tensions trumped economic concerns. The Syrian conflict, oil sanctions against Iran, and a suicide bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria, which Israel blamed on Iran, all added to fear of disruption in the region…
So here’s the question: Is solar just a cute diversion, like having a llama carry your backpack, or does it have the oomph to make a serious dent in the energy appetite of a populous country? Is it a toy or a tool? A llama or a mule?
