Switching America to Solar -- How Possible?

This video shows how very possible it could be, that it is, to switch America to solar energy.



Not only is this true, factual, but actually, if we would use our glass skyscrapers, in our cities, to have and use transparent solar cells on them, as well as the roofs of our homes, the land needed to power the nation shrinks yet more and very likely, dramatically.

US' First Solar Roadway?

Yessir. America is going to get its first solar roadway. A road, made of electricity-generating solar panels is coming to our nation, at last. And guess what state is getting them?

Why, it's little old Missouree.

America Is About to Get 

Its First Solar Roadway

Check this out:

Solar roadways are coming to the most famous highway in the United States — Route 66.

The simply named Solar Roadways, an Idaho startup run by husband-and-wife team Scott and Julie Brusaw, developed the technology and has entered a partnership with the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) to install their durable solar panels at a rest stop in Conway, Missouri, along the famous road.

The Brusaws achieved some viral fame through their Indiegogo campaign and the accompanying video, which garnered over 20 million views on Youtube and netted $2.2 million in donations for further development on the project.

The panels are roughly 70 pounds each and hexagonal, made of tempered glass that has the strength to hold cars and trucks and a tractioned surface that performs similarly to asphalt. According to the company’s website, the panels contain “LED lights to create lines and signage without paint heating elements to prevent snow and ice accumulation,” in addition to producing clean energy.

The company has been developing the technology through donations and grant programs and has passed two previous tests with federal highway officials prior to this latest project with MoDOT...

The world's first roadway has done extremely well:

World's First Solar Road Already 

Generating More Power Than Expected

So here's to you, Missouri. Leading the way into a cleaner, smarter future. We won't just leave that to the state of California any longer.

Two Huge Sources and Reasons for Hope

I saw two media releases yesterday that gave me hope for the future of electricity and reducing pollution and carbon emissions. And then there's the hope for humankind.

First this from Bill McKibben and his 350.org group and The New Yorker:

Power to the People

Why the rise of green energy makes utility companies nervous.

A little bit from the article.

Mark and Sara Borkowski live with their two young daughters in a century-old, fifteen-hundred-square-foot house in Rutland, Vermont. Mark drives a school bus, and Sara works as a special-ed teacher; the cost of heating and cooling their house through the year consumes a large fraction of their combined income. Last summer, however, persuaded by Green Mountain Power, the main electric utility in Vermont, the Borkowskis decided to give their home an energy makeover. In the course of several days, coördinated teams of contractors stuffed the house with new insulation, put in a heat pump for the hot water, and installed two air-source heat pumps to warm the home. They also switched all the light bulbs to L.E.D.s and put a small solar array on the slate roof of the garage.

The Borkowskis paid for the improvements, but the utility financed the charges through their electric bill, which fell the very first month. Before the makeover, from October of 2013 to January of 2014, the Borkowskis used thirty-four hundred and eleven kilowatt-hours of electricity and three hundred and twenty-five gallons of fuel oil. From October of 2014 to January of 2015, they used twenty-eight hundred and fifty-six kilowatt-hours of electricity and no oil at all. President Obama has announced that by 2025 he wants the United States to reduce its total carbon footprint by up to twenty-eight per cent of 2005 levels. The Borkowskis reduced the footprint of their house by eighty-eight per cent in a matter of days, and at no net cost.

I’ve travelled the world writing about and organizing against climate change, but, standing in the Borkowskis’ kitchen and looking at their electric bill, I felt a fairly rare emotion: hope. The numbers reveal a sudden new truth—that innovative, energy-saving and energy-producing technology is now cheap enough for everyday use. The Borkowskis’ house is not an Aspen earth shelter made of adobe and old tires, built by a former software executive who converted to planetary consciousness at Burning Man. It’s an utterly plain house, with Frozen bedspreads and One Direction posters, inhabited by a working-class family of four, two rabbits, and a parakeet named Oliver. It sits in a less than picturesque neighborhood, in a town made famous in recent years for its heroin problem. Its significance lies in its ordinariness. The federal Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, has visited, along with the entire Vermont congressional delegation. If you can make a house like this affordably green, you should be able to do it anywhere.

I’ve travelled the world writing about and organizing against climate change, but, standing in the Borkowskis’ kitchen and looking at their electric bill, I felt a fairly rare emotion: hope. The numbers reveal a sudden new truth—that innovative, energy-saving and energy-producing technology is now cheap enough for everyday use. The Borkowskis’ house is not an Aspen earth shelter made of adobe and old tires, built by a former software executive who converted to planetary consciousness at Burning Man. It’s an utterly plain house, with Frozen bedspreads and One Direction posters, inhabited by a working-class family of four, two rabbits, and a parakeet named Oliver. It sits in a less than picturesque neighborhood, in a town made famous in recent years for its heroin problem. Its significance lies in its ordinariness. The federal Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, has visited, along with the entire Vermont congressional delegation. If you can make a house like this affordably green, you should be able to do it anywhere.

Oh, yeah.

Hope.

Secondly, this. I wrote about this a year or two ago, the hope it can and would and should mean for us. This is from Bloomberg Business News.

Invisible Solar Cells That Could Power 

Skyscrapers

Can you imagine skyscrapers, creating their own energy, their own electricity?

Can you imagine how the owners and/or developers of these things would virtually line up to have their huge, towering buildings create their own electricity?

The saved, unused, uncovered Earth since we wouldn't need as many "solar farms," covered in panels?

Can you imagine the savings?

Can you imagine the reduced pollution and carbon emissions?

Then imagine lowered--possibly drastically lowered--energy bills?

One day, getting away from hydroelectric dams, jamming up our rivers?

Imagine.

Happy Solar Day 2015

Solar Day 2015

Recognition for Clean Energy, Energy Conservation and Sustainable Living

The SolarDay Mission Statement

1 – To create a national and international day of awareness and celebration of SolarDay, including: 

A – The many benefits of solar energy and energy independence,

B – The creation of more sustainable lifestyles and businesses,

C – The adoption of green and clean-technology that does not adversely affect the planet and the atmosphere,

D – Through SolarDay activities in the U.S. and worldwide experienced by hundreds of millions of people and governments with the objectives of 40 nations participating by 2014.

E – Gain official recognition of SolarDay by the U.S. government as an annual day of recognition of solar energy and the goal of energy independence as a fundamental part of citizen and business sustainability objectives for the country.

Link:   SolarDay 2015 | Solar, Sustainabilty, Clean Technology

The Way Forward in Energy

This, then, is a part of what our future could and should be and for so many reasons:

Solar Streets: New Roadways May Ditch Asphalt for Energy

Imagine having our streets laying in the sunlight, generating electricity, as our glass commercial towers and home roofs are, also.  Far cleaner, no need for coal, far less pollution, cutting carbon dioxide emissions, all that. Doing away with coal, coal mines, the dirty, literally sickening, even killing industry we know it still is.

This is the way forward. This gives hope and in more ways than one.

Quote of the day -- and from a surprising source

This will put solar energy in warp speed

Recently, I wrote about the invention and development out of UCLA that allowed solar photovoltaic cells to be transparent. It would make the laying on of these clear cells as sheets, very likely, on existing glass and windows to create electricity quickly, far more clean and far less expensive.

Now, today, I found this and its prediction, mirroring mine but far more precisely:

Foster's Solar-Skinned Buildings Signal Market Tripling

From the article:

From stadiums in Brazil to a bank headquarters in Britain, architects led by Norman Foster are integrating solar cells into the skin of buildings, helping the market for the technology triple within two years.

Sun-powered systems will top the stadia hosting 2014 FIFA World Cup football in Brazil. In Manchester, northern England, the Co-operative Group Ltd. office has cells from Solar Century Holdings Ltd. clad into its vertical surfaces.

The projects mark an effort by designers to adopt building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPV, where the power-generating features are planned from the start instead of tacked on as an afterthought. Foster and his customers are seeking to produce eye-catching works while meeting a European Union directive that new buildings should produce next to zero emissions after 2020.

“Building integrated solar in office buildings and factories which generate energy consistently during daylight hours, whilst not requiring additional expensive land space or unsightly installations, is seen as the most obvious energy solution,” said Gavin Rezos, principal of Viaticus Capital Ltd., an Australian corporate advisory company that’s one of the private equityfunds putting money into the technology.
Growing Market

The market for solar laid onto buildings and into building materials is expected to grow to $7.5 billion by 2015 from about $2.1 billion, according to Accenture Plc, citing research from NanoMarkets. Sales of solar glass are expected to reach as much as $4.2 billion by 2015, with walls integrating solar cellsat $830 million. About $1.5 billion is expected to be generated from solar tiles and shingles.

The technology provides a respite for solar manufacturers, opening the way for them to charge a premium for products. Traditional solar panel prices have fallen 90 percent since 2008 due to oversupply, cutting margins and pushing more than 30 companies including Q-Cells SE and a unit of Suntech Power Holdings Co. into bankruptcy.

We are truly, I think, clearly on the verge of an energy revolution that will take the world and rather quickly. A great deal of good will come from this, too, like far less expensive electricity for all and made far cleaner. Energy to our homes could nearly become like water, it seems. Possibly even less expensive than that. 

Imagine how quickly the owners of the businesses in the nation will want to buy up this technology, so they can create their own electricity so they cut their energy bill drastically.  Look at the Kansas City skyline alone:

And it's these businesses and corporations and buildings, doing this first--and likely very rapidly, since they'll save so much money so quickly--that will expedite this transition across the nation and world. Then, once that's forthcoming, it will be available for homes as well.

What's unfortunate is that all the governments across the world should respond to this a bit ahead of time by creating a necessary transition from our coal- and nuclear-based plants, generating power now, the way we're set up, to their being a "back up", which is what we'll need them for.

But governments, by and large, likely won't do that.

Here's hoping we get smart first, before this all takes place.

Solar panels will, very, very shortly, be a thing of the past, an energy dinosaur, as will coal and nuclear power.

Thank goodness and good riddance.

Great solar energy news out of California

Just as I'd hoped and written about here, earlier:

How your windows could be the future of electricity: Scientists create transparent solar panels out of 'glass-like' plastic

"...researchers developed a new transparent solar cell which means windows in homes and other buildings can have the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside.

The University of California, Los Angeles team describes a new kind of polymer solar cell (PSC) that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light, making the cells nearly 70 per cent transparent to the human eye.

They made the device from a photo-active plastic that converts infrared light into an electrical current.

"'These results open the potential for visibly transparent polymer solar cells as add-on components of portable electronics, smart windows and building-integrated photovoltaics and in other applications,' said study leader Yang Yang, a UCLA professor of materials science and engineering."

Here's one of the most important, additional features:

"'Our new PSCs are made from plastic-like materials and are lightweight and flexible,' he said. 'More importantly, they can be produced in high volume at low cost.'"

This is, potentially, a huge breakthrough.

Now if we can just put these all over our homes and commercial buildings, we'll be able to generate our own electricity, save loads of money, burn less coal and clean the air significantly, just with this one advancement. We'll be far less dependent on the utility companies, as well, of course. Finally, it seems we would be able to, eventually, anyway, do away also with nuclear energy, its costs and all the residual, additional nuclear waste we never knew how or where to store.

Those are huge improvements for societies and nations.

With the loss of power for some 600 million people in India the last two days, too, it's been pointed out that that is an excellent and timely reminder of coal's big weaknessses and shortcomings. If we can get this kind of technology out across the world, even the poor could have a steady, reliable and clean source of electrical energy. The benefits of this are multiple, at least, if not exponential.

I still say this could also lead to cars and buses having this same technology on them so we'd run clean transportation, too.

Here's hoping this spreads and spreads quickly, across the nation and world.

It is said that the nation that "owns" solar technology will own the next century.

Even if that's not true, this is a huge boon, potentially, for the nation and even, again, the world and in many ways.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2177763/Scientists-create-transparent-solar-panels-glass-like-plastic.html

Coincidentally, this article came out today, too:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/31/613161/massive-blackout-leaves-620-million-indians-without-power-demonstrating-dangers-of-relying-on-outdated-coal-system/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29

Is China fighting "the next war" while the US is fighting the "last war"?

For anyone who's read about or studied war, there is a famous line of thought that too many losing sides were always fighting the "last war", the previous war.

With the US still spending at least $711 million dollars per year on war and weapons of war, I think the likelihood is high that the US is still, in fact, fighting World War II or Vietnam or something, while China realizes that spending on their people and society and business and their economy is the "next war."

China is working hard and spending big on manufacturing, period, but on photovoltaic cells and solar technology, specifically, apparently and that may be, in fact, that "next war" at present.

It's fairly well accepted as truth that China is, right now, manufacturing lots of solars panels and dumping them on our American market.

The fact is, it's been widely accepted that whatever country owns solar energy in general, but photovoltaic cells, specifically, owns the next century.

Maybe we need to wise up.

And fast.

Link: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31825

Another economic race between states

There is an article out today about a "Ballot Initiative Would More Than Double Michigan’s Renewable Portfolio Standard" To an extent, I can see how a bit of a race will be taking place among states--if it hasn't already begun--to get more and more renewable energy and for a few reasons. First, it would be to have technology in the forefront of the state's economy. No state can afford to fall behind on cutting-edge technology. Second, it would be to lower energy costs for each state. Third, it likely add the jobs these projects and breakthroughs bring and finally, to have cleaner air. It's already true among nations--at least it is for those who care to take it on. The US needs to do a far better job of this. Link: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/01/15/ballot-initiative-would-more-than-double-michigan’s-renewable-portfolio-standard/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29

Great, breaking news on solar energy

Check it out: Breakthrough could double solar energy output "A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight. Not only that, but it’s way cheap." And that's not the end of the good news: "Breakthroughs in the solar industry seem to be coming fast of late. Just two weeks ago we heard about researcher Douglas Keszlar at Oregon State University in Corvallis, who is studying the photovoltaic potential of fool’s gold– pyrite – and discovered instead that some more ordinary materials could make improved photovoltaics, especially iron silicon sulfide. Once again, the advantage would be that it’s hyperefficient and cheap." I'm telling you, one day in the not too distant future, we will be able to have photovoltaic cells all over our homes, our office buildings and cars and they will generate their own electricity, far, far cleaner than we create that same energy today and with, obviously, far less pollution and carbon dioxide released. We won't need big, expensive, crushing utility companies any longer. Think about it. As the song says, "It's a new dawn. It's a new day." Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-breakthrough-double-solar-energy-output-20111216,0,3897047.story

The nation's--and world's?--"save": clean, renewable, affordable solar energy

"And now for something completely different: the success story you haven’t heard about. These days, mention solar power and you’ll probably hear cries of 'Solyndra!' Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste — although claims of a major scandal are nonsense — and a stick with which to beat renewable energy. But Solyndra’s failure was actually caused by technological success: the price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn’t keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year. This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal. And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point. But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach? Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar. So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true. Fracking is not a dream come true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we’re willing to let it in." --Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, writer and columnist, The New York Times Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/opinion/krugman-here-comes-solar-energy.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/opinion/krugman-here-comes-solar-energy.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

Imagine: A replacement solution for power plants and energy

As John Lennon said, let's imagine:

--Imagine there is a solution for getting away from burning coal, digging and mining for it

--Imagine there is a way to get away from power plants

--Imagine there's a way to cut down on our pollution

--Imagine there's a way to stop paying a monthly price for power

--Imagine there's a way to use our current office buildings and houses windows to create the electrical power we need

--Imagine, further, that we could use the windows on our cars to do the same--to generate the electricity to run our clean, electric cars

It may be here sooner than we think:

Green: Transparent Photovoltaic Cells Turn Windows Into Solar Panels

We need clean, green, renewable energy, folks--and here's why

We need clean, green, renewable energy--and as soon as possible, badly, for the following reasons: --First, the country who masters this (particularly--almost solely--photovoltaic cells) will rule the next several decades, if not the next century; --Second, because we're throwing away a TON of money and giving it mostly to the Middle East AND IT'S BANKRUPTING US; --Third, because we have a lot of enemies in the Middle East; --Fourth, we need it so we can have much cleaner air, water and soil; --We need it so we get out of burning fossil fuels and fowling our air, water and soil; --We need it so we get out of coal mining which is so bad for the miners, even when they aren't killed; --We need it so we stop--and as soon as possible--"mountaintop removal", particularly in West Virginia but all over Appalachia; --We need it so we gain more independence from power companies; --We need it so we more our citizens into more, better, cleaner and smarter employment; --We need it so we also have clean, "green" electic transportation that is also run on solar power so it is also far less polluting; --It really would create a great deal of new work for the country and they really would be much cleaner, smarter jobs for a lot of us. Those are the bare minimums. The benefits of this one move, for the country, would be so vast it's almost dazzling that we don't all realize them and why we need to make this happen. It would be far more beneficial than, by comparison, President Kennedy's challenge to get us to the moon within a decade, as he challenged us so many years ago. We need to do this. Have a great weekend, y'all.

Energy and power

Energy and the sources for energy and electricity in the United States--and the world, really--need to change.

Our old power structures used to work but they don't any longer.

The whole idea of having an electric company that creates the power, only to dole it out to all of us is extremely outdated, particularly here in America, where corporations own and run the power-generating facilities and they exploit their customers with whatever charges and price increases they want to put forward, just because they want it and because they have the government officials in their own financial pockets.

That's one reason it no longer works.

The other reason the old way doesn't work is because the way of creating the electricity--having turbines moved by water, usually--is so damaging and polluting to the environment.

Added to that the global warming, it's just a recipe for needing replacement.

And the thing is, we have a solution for this.

The fact is, we need to have photovoltaic cells on our commercial and residential buildings so each facility can create its own energy.

There's no reason this can't happen, technically.

It would solve the problems of people not being able to afford energy for heating and cooling, along with the environmental and global warming problems.

But the fact is, we have the power structures in existence now, in our governments and society, that want and need--for their own existence--to keep things just the way they are.

In Missouri, right now, for instance, the Kansas City Star reported that, even if you wanted to put solar panels on your home, you legally can't get insurance to cover it, thus making it virtually impossible to do.

Corporations are aligned against this advance in technology for our society.

It's probably much more possilbe in Europe, where they don't let corporations have a stranglehold on the citizen's actions and lives.

This is why I've said here that, with this new President, we have work ahead of us--a great deal of work--and we have to keep pushing and take our country and society back from the corporations.