-Caveat Lector-

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Let Solar Power See the Light of Day
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 07:19:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: ?
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Environment ENS -- Environment News Service

Healing Our World: Weekly Comment

By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

They've lost it, lost it, and their children will never ever wish for it -
and I am afraid ...  because the sun keeps rising and these days nobody
sings.  -- Aaron Kramer

Is it really a lack of the right technology that is keeping solar power off
the mass market?  Or is the light from our nearest star, the Sun, being held
hostage by an economy that is devoted to using up the Earth's last drops of
fossil fuel at all cost?

Using the light from the Sun, our ultimate energy source, is not a new
technology at all, but has been around for thousands of years.  Passive
solar heating, orienting a dwelling to take advantage of the sun, has
influenced the design of communities from the times of ancient Greece.  Fuel
wood supplies quickly dwindled as cities grew and an energy crisis was soon
at hand.  In the 4th century B.C., merchants rose to power by controlling
wood supplies and cornering export and import markets.  Greed is not a
modern invention.

Evidence of the use of solar architecture, the design of buildings to make
best use of the Sun, has been found in many archaeological excavations.  A
solar oriented home conserved the use of wood and coal and saved money.

In the 4th century A.D., all of the 4,000 residents of the city of Priene in
Asia Minor relocated their homes to nearby Mount Mycale to escape frequent
floods.  An entirely new city was designed and oriented so that they could
enjoy the warmth of the Sun in winter and be spared its heat in summer.

The use of glass in the 17th and 18th centuries was a way to capture the
heat of the Sun efficiently.  Soon, solar engines and machines were devised,
including a solar powered steam engine, and a solar boiler.  A massive solar
power plant was built in Egypt in 1912.  This plant could pump 6,000 gallons
of water per minute and generate 55 horsepower.  Plans were underway to
replace dirty coal with this new, cheaper form of energy.

The onset of World War I in 1914 ended that wave of solar development
projects around the world, as engineers and workers left their jobs in sunny
climates to do war related work in their homelands.

At this point, huge oil and natural gas fields were discovered, eliminating
the incentive to continue solar power development.  Oil and gas were selling
at giveaway prices, and the world's governments and business people became
complacent over the availability of energy.  Many of the land barons who
became the oilmen of the early 20th century formed the huge energy companies
we have today.

Also around this time, solar powered water heaters were really catching on.
More than half the population of Miami, Florida had them by 1941, including
80 percent of the new homes built.  But World War II and the prohibition on
non-military uses of copper nearly ended the industry in favor of new, cheap
electricity.

In the 1950s and 1960s, U.S.  gas and electric utilities promoted heavy
consumption in their advertising campaigns.  Lower prices were given to
those who used more energy!  The campaigns worked, and natural gas and other
fuel production doubled between 1950 and 1965.  With prices at two cents per
kilowatt-hour, there was absolutely no incentive to create energy efficient
appliances.

The energy ethic that exists today had taken hold.  The goal had become to
sell the cheapest forms of energy possible to make the most profit for
utility owners.  Alternative forms of energy that use free sources such as
sunlight, wind, and the heat of the Earth do not fit into this model of
production.

Even though crude oil shortages were beginning to appear in the mid-1960s,
the U.S.  government never embraced the new technology for solar cells.
Authors Ken Butti and John Perlin in their book "Golden Thread, 25,000 years
of Solar Architecture and Technology," said that "Washington's attitude
mirrored that of a nation hypnotized by seemingly limitless supplies of
cheap fossil fuel, and by the almost magic aura surrounding nuclear energy."

Butti and Perlin remind us that there was no powerful solar lobby like the
ones for the huge business interests behind coal, oil, gas, and nuclear
power.

Recently, some cities have offered subsidies for property owners who choose
to install solar cells to generate power.  But nearly all those programs
demand that the homes continue to be hooked up to the energy grid, selling
back their surplus power to the electric utility.  This has severely limited
the ability of people to be able to afford to leave the power grid
completely to supply their own energy needs.

The utility companies, of course, do not want you to leave the grid, since
such an approach would infringe on profits.  So anti-solar propaganda is
spread liberally around the world.  In an article in the "Washington Post"
on June 8 that was carried as a full page special feature in the "Seattle
Times," readers were told that even with batteries attached to solar
systems, "homeowners probably could not run washers and air conditioners at
the same time."

But do we really need to run them at the same time?  The same postwar energy
consumption mindset is still firmly in place.

That same article quotes a solar expert from the Electric Power Research
Institute who continues to dampen our enthusiasm for solar power today by
predicting that in "100 years from now, solar energy will provide a
substantial percentage of the world's energy needs." He tells us that solar
power is still a "luxury item, like buying a swimming pool." Sadly, it is
true.

But while the U.S.  government has been uninterested in developing solar
power commercially, many inventors around the world have continued solar
development and many other nations are aggressively pursuing solar power.
The Sanyo Company plans to build the world's largest solar power generation
system, with a 3.4 megawatt output, in Toyko by 2004.  One megawatt is
enough electricity to light 1,000 typical American homes.

Sim Van der Ryn, an architect who directed California's now defunct Office
of Appropriate Technology under Governor Jerry Brown, told the "Benicia
News," a California newspaper, "If the government had been a major purchaser
of [solar] photovoltaics, it would have stimulated that industry."

Van der Ryn asserts, "You could supply the entire electricity demand of the
U.S.  with one giant solar farm in Nevada."

As a 20 year veteran of our nation's space exploration program, I have seen
the advances made in creating solar power systems for spacecraft.  The
capability of creating super efficient machines exists as well.

While working on the Voyager, Galileo, and Space Station missions for the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, I worked designing missions for instruments that were the most
advanced, yet most energy efficient, on Earth.  A high resolution TV camera
used five to 10 watts of power.  Its counterpart in a TV station on Earth
uses tens of thousands of watts.

When fully deployed in space at the International Space Station, the eight
solar panel wings, each 107 by 38 feet, will encompass an area of 32,528
square feet, and will provide power to the station for 15 years.  Those
panels provide enough energy to power about 10 average American homes.

The solar technology is there, but the heart and motivation are not.  It is
time to throw open the doors to solar power technology and release the
stranglehold that fossil fuel energy companies have on our lives.

RESOURCES

1.  Visit Real Goods for a primer on solar power at
http://www.solareco.com/articles/articles.cfm?ct=1000.  While you are there,
you can outfit your home with the necessary equipment to get off the grid.

2.  Visit the Institute for Solar Living at
http://www.solarliving.org/index.cfm for info about a sustainable future.

3.  Get into solar cooking at: http://solarcooking.org/

4.  Learn about the human impact on our world from the Worldwatch Institute
at: http://www.worldwatch.org/.

5.  See a Greenpeace report about why we don't have more solar power by
clicking here.

6.  Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them.  If
you know your Zip code, you can find them at
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html.

7.  Contact President Bush at [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Tell him it is time
to let the Sun shine in and to stop resisting solar power.

{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.  is a writer and teacher in Seattle.  He can be
found marveling at all the energy from the Sun that bathes our Earth every
day.  Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and visit his web site at
http://www.healingourworld.com}

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