Biofuels have been around as long as cars have.

A biofuel is a fuel that contains energy from geologically recent carbon fixation. These fuels are produced from living organisms.

Generating Electricity from Wing Waves.

Wind turbines, like windmills, are mounted on a tower to capture the most energy. At 100 feet (30 meters) or more aboveground, they can take advantage of the faster and less turbulent wind.

Producing electricity from solar energy.

Solar energy is a free, inexhaustible resource, yet harnessing it is a relatively new idea. The ability to use solar power for heat was the first discovery.

Turbines catch the wind's energy with their propeller-like blades.

A blade acts much like an airplane wing. When the wind blows, a pocket of low-pressure air forms on the downwind side of the blade.

Solar energy may have had great potential

Solar technology advanced to roughly its present design in 1908 when William J. Bailey of the Carnegie Steel Company invented a collector with an insulated box and copper coils.

We have been harnessing the wind's energy for hundreds of years.

For utility-scale sources of wind energy, a large number of wind turbines are usually built close together to form awind plant.

Biofuels are produced from living organisms.

In order to be considered a biofuel the fuel must contain over 80 percent renewable materials.

Geothermal energy is the heat from the Earth.

Resources of geothermal energy range from the shallow ground to hot water and hot rock found a few miles beneath the Earth's surface, and down even deeper to the extremely high temperatures of molten rock called magma.

Geothermal heat pumps can tap into this resource to heat and cool buildings.

A geothermal heat pump system consists of a heat pump, an air delivery system (ductwork), and a heat exchanger-a system of pipes buried in the shallow ground near the building.

In the future, civilization will be forced to research and develop alternative energy sources.

Possession of surplus energy is, of course, a requisite for any kind of civilization, for if man possesses merely the energy of his own muscles, he must expend all his strength - mental and physical - to obtain the bare necessities of life.

Showing posts with label companies renewable energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label companies renewable energy. Show all posts

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Unintended Consequences

3:38 PM  , ,   

Unintended Consequences
Perhaps the opponents of wind power thought the whole thing would just go away, buried in a bureaucratic maze deep inside the four state agencies tasked with finding a new source of power here in Delaware.

Maria Evans of WGMD serves up a blistering account of why wind power is stalled, and offers an interview with Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf, who neatly summarizes the meaning of price stability:

"They can tell you on day one and they can tell you on day 3005 what you're going to pay for power." By the way, there is no other source of electric power that can offer that kind of guarantee. The Wall Street wizards who figured out how to transform subprime mortgages into AAA securities would laugh if you asked them to find a way to guarantee energy prices 25 years down the road.

The "News Journal" editorial board is no kinder to those who hope the proposal would simply disappear from view:

Almost two years ago the General Assembly came up with a piece of legislation that some of its members now view with horror. They had hoped it would soften the criticism they were receiving for a huge increase in the price of deregulated electricity.

The face-saving legislation launched a search for a renewable energy source. But the Legislature never expected what it eventually got: a plan for an offshore wind farm that also is wildly popular with many voters. The members also didn't expect that the proposal from Bluewater Wind would make its way through a variety of regulatory obstacles as well as the determined opposition of Delmarva Power. As the Bluewater proposal came closer to fruition, some members of the Legislature, answering to who knows which special interests, did what they always do: They got the whole thing tabled, in hopes that it would die a quiet death.Talk about unintended consequences: We might actually get what the law calls for. How did that happen? Instead of casting about for a way to avoid doing what the law calls for, legislators could start by reviewing precisely how the agreement to build the wind farm meets the requirements of the law they passed nearly two years ago.

Read More