Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Futurist says dollars mean bright future for solar energy
Solar power may bring us cleaner air and clearer skies. Nice, yes. But it’s money — not saving Mother Earth — that will catapult solar energy past dirty coal-fueled power plants.
That’s the theory of Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor. At a technology conference on Friday, Kurzweil said billions are being invested into solar power and new advances in the technology are driving down the cost of powering by the sun. “As a result, the amount of solar energy is doubling every year two years,” Kurzweil said. “But ultimately it will be very inexpensive. So what’s motivating (its adoption) is economics. “It has the side effect that it’s environmentally much friendlier,” Kurzweil said at the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference in Pasadena, California. The inventor is far from the first to predict the success of solar power. Some may give more weight to his words: Kurzweil has predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of wireless technology. He has his critics as well. Kurzweil, who wrote “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,” envisions a future where we can download memory and reverse-engineer the brain. (Reporting and writing by Laura Isensee)
(Picture: Inventor Raymond Kurzweil speaks at the Fortune Brainstorm TECH conference in Pasadena, California July 24, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Prouser)
Electric cars to help solve riddle of storing power
Since the days of Thomas Edison, finding a way to effectively store electricity has been one of the “Holy Grails” for power companies.
While it won’t be an overnight revolution for electricity, eventually plug-in electric cars and trucks will be a step toward the elusive goal, said Ted Craver, chief executive officer of Edison International.
Edison International is the parent of Southern California Edison (SCE), which is the biggest utilty in the United States in terms of power delivered to customers.
”They are effectively storage units on wheels,” Craver said of electric cars and trucks.
Vehicles batteries charged during off-peak periods could feed power back to the grid during periods of peak demand, said Craver in a telephone interview on Thursday.
California like other states requires that power utilities have enough power plant generation to serve the highest demand day of the year. This means that more than half of the state’s power generation sits unused most of the time.
The idea of using the installed power base to supply of-peak energy (especially for transportation) is one quickest ways to reduce emission and increase societal efficiencies known. A significant part of our energy comes from nuclear (20%) and hydroelectric(approx 10%) These sources cannot be turned down, and also produce energy carbon free. Because they cannot be turned down, we would in essence be charging up automobiles for free. The capital costs of installation are already made, with the baseline power output used for daytime peak loading. In principal wind energy could also be stored in mobile systems.
It doens’t matter that much “it’s money — not saving Mother Earth” as long as solar energy saves our planet from dying.