Green Energy
Green Energy is a huge buzz word and industry we all talk about. Let’s explore the top contenders that might provide our energy in the future. They are:
Solar Power
Wind Power
Biomass
Biofuel
Solar power should be divided in two categories. Passive solar and active solar.
Passive is defined as ways to orienting structures and using material to absorb or dissipate heat energy.
Here is just one example when building a house in a warm climate to optimize passive solar energy. You would orient the house to avoid direct sun light into windows, design the roof to reflect sunlight, extend soffits at less two feet to provide shade for the walls and windows, grow trees to shade the house and use materials to reduce the absorption of solar radiation. Passive solar energy is inexpensive and pays for ever.
Active solar energy is using materials to capture and harness solar radiation. The most common are photovoltaic cells and heat engines.
A common example of a heat engine is a steam engine. In this case solar radiation is captured to produce steam and then the steam is used to preform work.
Photovoltaic cells get the most amount of attention. They are important because they can convert solar radiation into electricity. Currently the real world conversion rate is about 10% to 20%. Initially it was 1% to 3%. Right now the conversion rate to cost is too high to make solar cells competitive with current energy sources. At some point the cost to produce solar cells will decrease along with increased efficiency to make them a competitive energy solution.
Wind Energy has been used for hundreds of year is not thousands. Everyone has seen pictures of windmills used to draw water from wells, grind wheat into flour and run industrial equipment. Today the focus is on producing electricity.
Electric windmills use the wind to turn a rotor. This rotor then turns a generator that produces electricity. It is the same concept as a dam, except the dam uses water to turn the generator.
The negatives on windmills are the visual site, cost of connecting to the grid or buying batteries, they only work in strong wind areas and the noise.
Cost of connecting to the grid is an important issue. Since most people object to having windmills near them they are usually relegated to isolated areas. Not only does this create transportation problems for installation and maintenance; it also requires costly installation of high voltage power lines through property owned by many different interests and people.
Biomass is one of the brighter options. Biomass comes from waste. Things such as garage, animal manure, lumber mill waste, tires and yard clippings to name a few. They are waste products that have traditionally filled our landfills. In many sites across the world this waste is now collected and recycled into power. To do this the biomass is feed into a furnace and burned. The heat creates steam and the steam is used to turn generators thus creating electricity.
California produces 60 million tons of bone dry biomass every year. This is enough waste to produce nearly 2,000 megawatts of electricity; enough electricity to serve 2 million homes. A secondary bi-product is saving thousands of acres of land from being used as landfills.
Biofuels are made from biomass. Currently corn and sugar cane are the major sources for biofuels. Recently corn has lost favor, because we use almost as much energy to produce corn biofuels as it yields. In other words we use approximately 1 unit of energy to produce 1.5 units of corn energy (a yield of 1 to 1.5). Sugar cane on the one hand is ideal because the waste product of the food is used to product biofuel with yields of 1 to 8.
Green energy technology is improving and it is very likely we will have viable, abundant, competitive, clean and renewable energy sources in the future.
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