To default to oil or coal is to condemn our planet to death.

LS @ 40

Wow…CNN is really bashing Edwards, …

Good. The Clinton or Obama handlers must be getting worried about him. …

Boxturtle(I’D have trouble endorsing Clinton in the general election without using the phrase “Lesser of evils”. GOOOO Edwards!!)

Great point! How low does the Democratic party have to go to force it’s most loyal members into saying, “I’m voting for the lesser of two evils.”?

We need a candidate who is all positive, someone we’ll be proud to vote for and tell our friends about.

It was cold outside and the homeless were freezing on the streets. A local wine shop owner decided to help out with some cheap K-Mart tents.

You could say, it was the vintner of our discount tents.

The price drop makes breakthroughs like this even more exciting:

“A company in Japan has developed a novel way of making solar cells that cuts production costs by as much as 50 percent. The photovoltaic (PV) cells are made up of arrays of thousands of tiny silicon spheres surrounded by hexagonal reflectors.

The key advantage of the system is that it reduces the total amount of silicon required, says Mikio Murozono, president of Clean Venture 21 (CV21), based in Kyoto, Japan. “We use one-fifth of the raw silicon material compared with traditional PV cells,” he says…

CV21’s solution was to place each of the one-millimeter-diameter silicon spheres in its own hexagonal aluminium reflector. These work like car headlights but in reverse, ensuring that any light hitting the reflector is directed toward the sphere. When this approach is used, even the underside of the sphere is utilized. The hexagonal shape of the reflectors allows them to be slotted together without dead space between them. “Effectively, these are mini-concentrators,” says Branz.”

Focusing Light on Silicon Beads, in MIT’s Technology Review

That’s amazing. Thanks!

“A company in Japan has developed a novel way of making solar cells that cuts production costs by as much as 50 percent. The photovoltaic (PV) cells are made up of arrays of thousands of tiny silicon spheres surrounded by hexagonal reflectors.

The key advantage of the system is that it reduces the total amount of silicon required, says Mikio Murozono, president of Clean Venture 21 (CV21), based in Kyoto, Japan. “We use one-fifth of the raw silicon material compared with traditional PV cells,” he says…

CV21’s solution was to place each of the one-millimeter-diameter silicon spheres in its own hexagonal aluminium reflector. These work like car headlights but in reverse, ensuring that any light hitting the reflector is directed toward the sphere. When this approach is used, even the underside of the sphere is utilized. The hexagonal shape of the reflectors allows them to be slotted together without dead space between them. “Effectively, these are mini-concentrators,” says Branz.”

Focusing Light on Silicon Beads, in MIT’s Technology Review

So where’s all the lead for the storage batteries going to come from? And all the copper for the wiring? The Chinese? Sir Richard Branson? (I hear he’s been investing millions on a system of electricity generation that burns corn to make steam that turns turbines…)

Much of the distribution system is in place already.

Another concept is to use automobile battery storage as a massive decentralized storage system. This would require autos to be plugged in when not in use so their batteries are on line, so to speak. This ideas seems quite speculative but interesting none the less. The batteries would need to be part of an economically secured recycling process—which is doable. If each battery is recycled for, say $300, you wont see many in landfills.

Or we could just stick with what we have–Eore.

Another developing alternative is the “ultracapacitor”. Though (currently) limited in terms of energy storage capacity, it could help buffer a household’s worth of usage for a short period.

Instead of lead-acid, we should be using nickel metal hydride or lithium batteries. Here’s why…

40 Million Electric Bikes Spark Environmental Dilemma in China

Each battery represents 30-40 percent of its lead content emitted to the environment in the production processes, resulting in about 3 kilograms of lead emitted per battery produced.

When scaled up the 40 million electric bikes currently on the roads, this is an astonishing amount of lead emitted into the environment.

I don’t know why the process is so wasteful.

Me too.

But if those solar sources are hooked into the power grid, the grid can always feed where there’s sunshine, and pipe those electrons to places where its dark, and store them up for the few hours when the entire continental US is dark. You don’t have to have a 100% solar grid.

The feed-in power grid is what gets me excited. Imagine an open, decentralized distribution system that will enable every one of us to generate and consume energy from the network. It encourages diversity and the development of alternative energy strategies. If solar works better in Nebraska then use solar and sell the excess you generate back into the system. If wind is better in North Dakota then use your turbine to generate power for your own use and for sale back into the grid. The system is diverse, regionally adaptable, and robust because of the inherent redundancy. (If there should be too many cloudy days or no wind it is more likely to be limited to a particular region and weather pattern. Other regions could be tapped to compensate. Additionally, conventional generation could provide a fall back source of power.)

The other exciting aspect of this is that an open network concept provides a direct incentive for property owners to generate their own power using small-scale sustainable methods and relatively small capital investments. It is a truly self-generating (local and small at first but large and diverse once it is developed) power system that is analogous in structure to the internet. This kind of system avoids the huge investment cost associated with centralized power plants—especially nuclear energy. It does require the utilities to maintain the grid, provide backup and monitor the movement of power. They would make money doing this.