Solar Energy Drawbacks
Solar panels may become our main sources of electric power in years to come. Today they’re just one of electricity sources that we use as alternatives to fossil fuels. In future we’ll move into direction of renewable energy we should have a look at benefits and limitations of all of them. Below I’ll just focus on the drawbacks of solar panels.
Firs thing. Using them we rely on the weather. If the sky is cloudy or polluted, it’s going to decrease amount of energy that battery will be able to receive. In most cloudy days it can even go down to zero. We don’t really want to feel that that if we can heat our home, or even watch TV depends on how clear the sky is.
Second thing. What flows out from the previous one – these panels only work during the day. Of course we will store the power we gathered last day using our backup battery system or net metering… but in some places on the earth day is really short. What then? And in winter days are shorter everywhere… The more advanced this methods of storage will become, the more reliable these systems will be.
Third issue. At the moment the initial cost of installing such a system is high. Too high for most of us. Primary reason for that is that semi-conducting materials we use in their construction are so expensive. When more and more people will decide to install solar panel, prices will eventually drop down for sure. Everything becomes cheaper when it’s more popular. If more people will be interested in buying it, there will be more competition out there on the market, and competition cuts prices down. But here and now their prices are just too high.
Fourth thing. You need some space to put your solar batteries on it. It’s not a problem if you own a house – you get on the roof and put them there. But so many people in the earth stay in the blocks of flats – and there is only one roof for few dozens of people there. One solar panel will not collect enough of energy for all of them. The good solution of this problem would be if we’d build big solar batteries located in remote areas that would collect great amounts of power. This energy would be then distributed to such blocks of flats. But this again would be quite expensive, and today it’s just a futurology
Above I briefly described are main limitations of solar energy panels that we’re facing today. Only when we know them we can do something to overcome them. Or to find other free energy generator that will be easier accessible.
We as a human race use more and more of electricity every year. Fossil fuels will come to an end sooner or later and we will have to switch into some alternatives. We use some of them already (in most countries on a small scale). Lets have a look at most popular of them.
One.
Windmills. They’re with us for hundred years already. Wind is a great energy source as it’s renewable (it will keep blowing) and ecological (we don’t need to emit any sort of toxic smoke, to use it). It’s widely accessible across the world. The minus of this solution is that using it we depend on the weather. If there is no wind, we get electricity amount equal to zero – not fun.
Two.
Solar panels. Sun emits so huge amounts of power that if we could capture all of it for just one hour - we would be able to power with electricity the whole planet for a whole year. Nowadays we use few kinds of solar panels like, photoelectric cells, and heliostats (which are basically synchronised mirrors following sun as it moves on the sky).
Three.
Free energy generator – basing on Zero Point Magnetic Power. Therese are magnetic devices producing higher quantity of energy than they use. Working 100% to power your house. You can buy an e-book and build it by yourself – e-book are popularised on a Do It Yourself scheme.
Four.
Biomass. This is basically everything that comes from living organism We’ve bee using it for the longest time. During ancient times we used wood to get fire. There is a minus of this biomass. And it is that unless you use plant that was already death, you need to put next plants into the ground to keep ecosystem in harmony.
Five.
Water turbines. Putting turbine into strong water current we get the same result as we get with windmills. It’s just taking place underwater. This source is independent from the weather. Unfortunately is limited to places in close vicinity to rivers.
Tags: free energy generator, renewable energy, solar panels, water turbines, windmills
As you read this, you’re probably interested in setting up an energy system for yourself. You may feel intrigued and confused at the same time. Maybe even a sort of sceptical about the idea that you yourself will have this sort of device running in your own house and providing you with free electricity? This is how I felt few months ago, and believe me the joy and amazement that I experienced after the system started running was much greater than any of these emotions that I got before.
Here below I put for you my own experiences from the beginning to the point I’m in right now.
First I found their website, and read about how it works. As I knew about Nikola Tesla’s work from the beginnings of twentieth century I felt like I found something I was waiting for a long time. I was always fascinated with the idea of finding completely new ways of gathering electric power. Tesla’s inventions were going into that direction, but he never finished his biggest project on that so I thought the idea was lost.. for centuries. And it realized to be ready to use now – in the beginning of XXI century.
The key concept of this solution is focused on using magnets. It lets create motion that produces energy. I think this is great somebody finally actually did the job and put it together.
Of course I bought it and got down to cases. First thing I did was to really precisely read the manual. This is essential to really read through it instead of just scanning it. You need to treat this seriously, and make sure you’ll do everything the correct way.
Nest point is small shopping in a local hardware store (and I’ve spent less than $150 on that) to buy all the materials necessary. I didn’t need to buy any extra tools, just the materials. After that the main part came in – doing the actual work and putting everything together. That was the part I was most unsure about.. will I manage to do it by myself? And the good news for all you guy (and girls!) out there is: YES I was! And I was much easier than I thought It’s gonna be. Manual they send you is really clear and to the point, and you even get video instructions (which is also a great help as you can actually see someone doing what you need to do).
The best part yet is what’s going on from then on – I get free electricity, and that let’s me seriously reduce my household’s bills. Also I know don’t add to the toxic smoke that is produced from oil and coal burning, so I help to save a Nature in a way.
Tags: free energy generator, tips
We live in interesting times. Renewable electricity sources age spreading on the market, new technologies are still being invented and prices of traditional fuels constantly pick up. I believe we should consider what does it all mean for us – for our everyday lives that we live today and for our future social changes.
We get alternative energy from few different sources like wind and water turbines, geothermal power plants, or solar batteries). Commercialisation of these solutions is taking place from quite a long time already. Believers of these solutions claim this is because of active work of oil industry. People connected to it are told to be spending huge money on lobbying and bribing government to keep things just as they are today. Oil and coal consortiums get huge subsidies and other support (like supporting regulations) from governments, and media burry real social costs of their use. Mainstream media also do not say anything about possible alternatives (like alternative energy sources, among which some can be called free energy generator). Just like everyone was somehow wired to chose close term benefits over long term benefits.
If we want to change things we need to take the economy to the debate. Economists have discussed it many times, what exactly should be done to switch the world into using renewable energy. The one single most important think they talk about is… taxes. Change of taxes is necessary as long as we’re talking about long term transformation. What is necessary is lowering income taxes and raising taxes on environmentally destructive solutions (connected to fossil fuels industry). For example coal use equals increased health care costs associated with breathing polluted air, the costs of acid rain damage. Things like that should be included within ‘fossil fuels tax’. The main idea is to make using coil and oil a bad deal. Some of modern economies in Europe (like Norway, France, Germany, or Italy) already started implementing this tax shifting (the call it “Environmental Tax Reform”). And it brings great effects. For instance in Germany traditional fuels use has been lowered by 5% in just two years.
Another crucial issue economists arise is a need of grants shifting. As long as governments will subside oil industry, there will be expansion on fossil fuels usage. What we need is to relocate subsidies traditional energy into renewable solar, wind, and geothermal power. In parts of the Europe and Asia this has already started, but in United States it’s just the opposite – the financial support for fossil fuels and nuclear power has been increased.
When global economic crisis began main economies allocated big money into renewable energy. That was to support recovery of global economy. This may be good beginning of a new stage of these technologies development and spread.
Tags: policy, renewable energy
The History of Solar Energy
From how long do you think we use sun energy? Most of think it’s just from few years.. yet this technology would be highly developed already, if we worked on it some longer right? As it brings us free electricity, and uses potential of the sun that in our understanding is close to unlimited, it would squeeze fossil fuels out completely in short time, right? Unfortunately no. Researches on solar energy usage have been taking place from a long time. Exactly from the beginning of ninetieth century already. We noticed fist successes in powering a house with solar energy as early as in 1883 – and still we mostly use fossil fuels today.
As early as during ancient times Greeks and Romans used to build their homes at a particular angle, that they calculated in details. Thanks to that they could use minimum quantity of wood to heat the house. That was extremely important as proper wood was a rare commodity that times. Even famous philosopher Socrates once told that each house should be south facing. Thanks to that it’ll be receiving a maximum amount of sunrays during the winter. After Roman Empire fallen, the idea of using solar energy disappeared for as along as about two thousand years.
And then the renewal time came. During Industrial Revolution people started massively using fossil fuels to produce electricity. Auguste Mouchout was the first to invent solar battery. He understood the limitations of oil and coal so long ago, when it seems that some people can’t see them even today. These times we were finding new resources of oil and coal on a regular basis. That was the reason no one could actually imagine we’ll ever run out of them. in 1861 first solar battery working fully on solar energy was build. We can say that was the firs free energy generator in the history. Bad luck that was the time when coal prices were dropping down rapidly, and the device was expensive. So it didn’t become popular and was forgotten for obvious reasons.
From then until oil crisis in 1973 all debate about solar energy was limited strictly to scientific circles. Although in 1921 Albert Einstein received Nobel Prize for his researches on principle of photoelectric effects on electrical generation, it didn’t bring any practical breakout. Even when in 1953 Bell Laboratories created a silicon based solar cell that was able to create some electricity it was still much to expensive to become popular.
Yet after 1973 solar panels were developed rapidly. That was mainly thanks to huge sums governments put into researches that led to more efficiency and lower costs of these technologies. Now it’s available for many people even in the form of solar-panels-home-systems.
Tags: solar energy, solar pannels, sun
Wind may become our primary energy source in future, that will come after fossil fuel reserves will perish. Today it’s just an alternative to oil and is not widely used – just the same as water turbines, solar panels, biomass or geothermal. It’s used on a large scale (as huge farms that are made to supply whole cities) as well as on a micro-scale, as small windmills that you can put next to your house and get energy for yourself from it. It’s good idea to have a detailed information about advantages and drawbacks of all potential sources of electricity. Especially that in future we’re going to need them really strong. Here I’ll focus on disadvantages of wind energy only.
Problem number one. Wind energy depends on the atmosphericall circumstances. Of course we may build battery bank that will work as a backup power. But if the air will stay still for too long period of time, we will probably run out of electricity all the same. This is the primary and the most obvious minus.
Next issue – windmills are constructed with use of lots of moving elements. It’s stuffed with things like rotors, bearings, mounting joints and others. You probably know that every single thing that moves is going wear. In practice that means they need maintenance - you can’t just set them and leave them.
Third thing – these systems may make noise. This is like changing air pollution of oil into “sound pollution” of windmill. If you’d like to make a windmill for yourself, next to your house, this may become big minus to consider.
Four thing – with windmills is not easy to calculate ROI (return of investment) exactly. The reason is that strength of wind changes constantly. This makes energy cost constantly changing (increasing and decreasing).
The last thing is that wind farms require lots of space if we want to collect big amounts of energy. Unfortunately there are places in the earth where space is really something in demand (like in Japan for example)
These are main drawbacks of wind energy. Knowing them we can work to overcome them or to find other free energy generator that we can access much easier.
Tags: electricity, renewable energy, wind, windmill
Compact fluorescent light bulbs – are they really good?
As the customs change, and being eco-friendly is ‘trendy’ some institutions want to make use of for their own advantage. Nothing bad with that. As long as they ship something that helps save the environment it’s great deal for everyone. Yet that’s not always the case. Sometimes they want t sell something that is harmful, tarrying to make people believe it helps environment. Nowadays lots of governmental agencies make everything they can to persuade people into using compact fluorescent bulbs in our homes. In European Union there is even an regulation that makes selling and buying incandescent bulbs illegal.
Yet there are several problems with these ‘recommended’ modern light bulbs. Let’s examine them a bit closer.
The first and the most important disadvantage: they contain mercury. And that is highly toxic chemical compound, that nobody would like to store in their homes. Bulb can always get broken by accident – and in that case it will release the toxic stuff inside your house. We are told not to bin these bulbs but to dispose them to special containers.. I think this speaks for itself.
Second issue is that the light they emit looks artificial compared to this coming from traditional bulbs. Old bulbs were giving us a light that was very similar to those of sun rays. And if you switch these modern one’s you feel it’s something wrong with them. Just like your body was telling “I don’t like that”.
Another think is that I was told many times, that they don’t really work that long. Many people reported their fluorescent bulb to finish working much earlier than they should according to the claims their producers make.
What’s also annoying is that they give less light than the incandescent bulbs. If you’ll compare two of them (both with the same wattage label) you’ll easily see, the fluorescent one will not be able to produce as much light as the incandescent one.
Fortunately there is an alternative that is coming to the market – there are LED lighting bulbs. They emit warm light similar to those from incandescent bulbs.
Tags: electricity, fluorescent bulbs, savings
Renewable energy sources like solar wind or geothermal all have lots of benefits. They’re eco-friendly (free of toxic emissions to the atmosphere) and constantly refilled by the nature itself. We can not run out of them. They’re also cheap (after initial investment was recurred), and some of them even free. Good example is solar power that has zero cost of capturing sun rays. At this point important question arises: why we actually still use fossil fuels? Why wind, solar and others are called alternative energy sources, and not the primary ones?
The problem that we touch here is a complex one, and we have to see the big picture of global situation to really understand it. I’ll just tell you that more than 70% of obstacles to spread of renewable energy are of political not technical nature. Below you can read about some of the actual reasons.
Governmental grants in great numbers are placed into fossil fuels industry. Of course it doesn’t happen by itself – oil consortiums are actively lobbying year after year to make it happen. Thanks to that oil and coal energy prices are lower than they “really” are. We still pay the full price (in taxes) but it just seems to be lower. Alternative energy sources on the other hand do not receive so much subsidies, and are struggling with tons of unsupporting regulations.
Traditional energy consortiums can control the market very easy, thanks to low level of customers awareness. The average Joe will not actively seek for other opportunities that those he’s told about in TV.
Most of customers in any given industry will just buy “what’s on the menu”, and not ask for anything else. It’s just the same with energy industry.
Another thing is that we’re lacking adequate technical and manufacturing stuff needed for large scale production of these technologies. The reason is that it’s in early stadium of commercialisation. Customers can’t get information and training they need easy, so some of them just stay with current supplier.
One more problem is a sort of technical lock-in we got into. All electricity devices we use nowadays are designed for centralised power plants and it’s difficult to overcome the all electricity system.
Understanding these obstacles above we fully recognize how huge transformation we need to make in our whole social system and in governments policies. Most of all we need to allow unconstrained development of this solutions and stopped favouring fossil fuels industry.
Nikola Tesla was Yugoslavian inventor, who lived in the second half of nineteenth, and first half of twentieth century. He contributed to invention of large part of technologies that we use in our everyday lives today. Although during his life he we was well known, he’s name was removed from history books after his death for some reason. Today, only those interested in alternative energy sources know who he was.
Lets take simple example as radio. Almost everyone think that was invented by Italian scientist Gulielmo Marconi nowadays. But the truth is that Tesla was the first to fill the patent. But Marconi managed to promote himself as inventor, as he was more success-oriented. Tesla was more focused on his inventions than on PR and marketing. Although he also made some public presentations – mainly that of electricity. So he at least didn’t suffer public speaking anxiety. Only as late as in year nineteen forty three the Supreme Court of United States overturned Marconi’s patent in favour of Tesla.
He’s spent lots of time dreaming of free energy generator that would power all world. He had his first visions on that sort of project as a child. He thought he could capture Niagara Waterfalls power and then use it to supply local people’s households. And that vision came true. He realized it in eighteen ninety six – Niagara Falls energy was then first used to supply Buffalo city. It was possible only after five years of hard work of engineers, mechanics and workers. Some of sponsors had already started doubting in sense of the project. The idea was highly innovative that times. So just the plain fact of actually running that new kind of powerhouse was considered a great success to everyone involved.
But yet that was just part of he’s projects, and his vision was going much, much further into the future technologies. He wanted to build a sort of solar energy receiver which would be able to gather and distribute solar energy. That idea he’d left aside. Tesla’s biggest dream connected to energy searches was to get free energy from the Earth. His vision was that he will pump electricity inside the planet and then, change it’s inner state, so that it will be possible for everyone to get it back from everywhere in the world. That way it was going to be free. To get it one was going to need just pocket device. Using planet as a sort of oscillator he wanted to construct free energy generator – quantity of electricity that people could get was going to be infinite.
Bad luck this machine was never made. In the end of nineteen zero one, Tesla’s sponsor investor – JP Morgan refused further credits for development of this project.
At this point I’d like mention Tesla’s quirks. He had lots of compulsive-obsessive behaviours. Most of them were focused on counting things like breaths or jaw movements during eating. He also felt he has to compete all things he started. For example if he started reading any given authors book, he had to real all his books.
Tesla died in 1943 leaving one thousand two hundreds patents and hundreds of ideas that he newer wrote down.
Tags: electricity, free, free energy generator, Tesla
Nowadays our environment is terribly polluted, and this problem grows in importance every year. And speaking about that let’s think about something closer to each of us – air pollution. We all experience it on everyday basis, no matter if we’re aware of it or not. It’s said that one hour of jogging in Manhattan will make such damages to your health, that it can be compared to those made by smoking one packet of cigarettes. If we want this situation to change, we all have to do something by ourselves. Below I put some practical tips for reducing air pollution, for you to consider.
First. Try changing your travelling behaviours. One of our main pollution sources are cars. What if you tried using public transport from time to time? Could you consider riding bike to work and back. What about riding to work with colleague? Can you give it a try? There is one more thing: if you wait for somebody with engine working you’re also making more pollution than it’s necessary – so don’t do it.
Second thing. Some people decide to plant a tree. Trees emit oxygen to the atmosphere, and by that hey help keep it clean. You also can do it , planting even just one will make a difference. Lots of places will be good for it – public parks, your backyard, or some remote place. What’s nice about that is that you’ll be able to see ‘your’ three growing for many, many years even when you yourself will get old, it still will be growing.
Third tip. What about recycling stuff – do you actually do it? If you reuse something there will be no need for a factory to produce new thing – and that reduces toxic gases it would have produced in other case. And you don’t ‘contribute’ to growing mountain of litter. Some of your old stuff you can even sell to junk shops and make money on it! If you recycled one kilogram of anything, you just prevented two kilograms of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere.
Another thing: make aware shopping. Make sure that what you buy is reusable. Make selection and reject stuff that harms the environment like plastic bags for example.
Fifth point – Do not smoke J People who smoke are responsible for emission tons of pollutants to the atmosphere. Really don’t think this is something so small it won’t make a difference – it will. There is so much of these pollutants, that that some researches say air pollution caused by them is 10 times greater than that one made by emissions form diesel cars.
The last but not least. 6. Switch into using renewable energy sources if you can. You can choose from many solutions like windmills, few kinds of solar panels or free energy generator. This can make great difference, as fossil fuels make most part of air pollution.