So over the past couple of days the Dr. No ad came out. Very clever advertisement I must say. But tying it to firm examples of “no” was a little tough. Well the folks over at Flopping Aces were able to tie it to a development in the Solar Energy industry that is disconcerting.
Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land
Go read the whole post here.
Back at the turn of the century, I was working a project in Ft. Worth. One of the buildings that I walked by on a daily basis was the Federal Building. It has reflective, mirror like surface on it’s windows. Even 2 or 3 blocks aways you could feel the heat reflected from those surfaces. My suggestion to the Solar Energy industry, look at building level energy plants. Seriously. The wide open desert spaces of the west are great for large solar collection arrays but, you have to distribute that power either through existing lines, or most likely through an investment in new towers, lines, and networks. That is going to take some time. In the short term think small. Put solar arrays around the outside exposures of some of the buildings in sun drenched cities. Austin, Houston, Phoenix, Tuscon, Dallas, etc. Use those collectors and a small turbine on the roof to produce power for the building itself. You probably won’t be able to power the whole facility but you can power a good portion of it. On flatter, more sprawling facilities you probably can get a good roof level array going.
The goal here is to penetrate the local markets quickly with small scale energy generation to reduce the overall demand on the utilities generation facilities. This has the advantage of appealing to the building owners / tenants directly. The large scale plants are going to sell their energy to the utility companies for distribution to the end user, and the associated markup gets passed on to the consumer.
Sorry… I got sidetracked on one of my pet ideas again. Go see Dr. No