Alternative Energy Sources

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how electrical energy is made from alternative form of energy
(wind,solar,geo-thermal)

For alternative energy that comes from something that moves like geothermal, hydro, wind, tidal, you say that the stuff flows through a turbine, which has blades like an airplane propeller, and that turns a generator, like the one on your bike that runs the light. There are several kinds of solar, and some heat water to drive a turbine. You don’t have to explain how solar cells work - you can point to a solar calculator, and say that this patch produces electricity, and it can be done with really big patches.

Fourth graders know how to do math, like multiply and divide. That’s pretty sophisticated.

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In NY I can get a DIY kit for about $6/watt, so a 10KW system, which is quite large, will cost $60,000. The utility gives me a $35,000 rebate, reducing the cost to $25,000. The state gives me a $5,000 tax credit, and the Fed gives me a $7,500 tax credit, so my final cost is $12,500.
That system in NY will produce 12,730 Kwh/yr or $2,800 worth of electricity, for a 4.5 year payback.

The point is, rebates and tax credits will dictate the cost much more than any "bargain" you may find.

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I have to write a report comparing and contrasting 3 types of renewable energy sources. One of my chosen ones is already geothermal, can you give me two more renewable energy sources that are considered the best ones? Because I have to choose which one is the best and explain why it is.

Thanks.

By the way if you can, make sure it's a good source for CANADA.

There is no single best source. What works best in one area may not work at all in another. Solar is great, but only works when the sun is out, wind can work 24/7 but many areas the winds are seasonal. geothermal only works in specific geographical areas and is impractical for individual use. The best is a combination of energy sources to ensure no interuption in service.

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If we have solar powered energy cars, cars will only be able to go go at a maximum rate of about 40 mph really depending on the sunlight.

Oh heck yeah! I work for the DMV!

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that is a wonderful statement, could you specify please, and yes they do exist! adios!

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http://www.njsolarpower.com/images/SI_fa…

could somebody please give me a good explanaton of the process illustrated…I need it for a presentation but I don't really understand the whole charge controller/inverter/battery thing

cheers

also if you can answer that, you probably know the answer to this too. What are current widespread and tested applications of solar power?

thanks

Well your link is broken, but if you are talking about charge controllers and inverters then you probably want an explanation of how solar works.

Basically the solar photovoltaic panels create electricity (ie: electrons moving due to the photons etc…). The electricity that is generated from a solar panel is DC (direct current) and a typical home uses AC (alternating current) so the inverter is the device which converts DC to AC so that solar generated electricity can be used in the home or business.

Now before the electricity goes to the inverter, if the solar system has a battery backup, the electricity can be routed to a battery. This is where the charge controller comes into the picture. The charge controller will take a preset amount of electricity from the total output of the solar panel array and put that electricity (DC) into the batteries. Then when the battery is full the charge controller will realize this and stop pumping electricity to it. If you dont already know, its bad for a battery if you continue to charge it after it is fully charged. (degrades the life)

Hope that clears it up.

As far as solar applications. Now and days solar can be used pretty much anywhere for anything, even mission critical stuff like hospital backup. The technology is very well tested and the price has dropped to a point where it is a very feasible solution.

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I need to do a biography on a significant person in renewable energy, but I can't find anything on the Internet. Could you please send me a site where I can find a biography?

Look up T. Boone Pickens. He is a former oil man and corporate raider who has a ton of money and wants to do wind farms all over the place.

He became famous in the 1980's be acquiring big oil companies then selling them off (in whole or in part) and made a ton of money.

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Can you please help me rephrase that?

increasing the power of solar energy

working with solar energy to increase its power

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Hi all,

got interested in stock of companies dealing with alternative energy sources. Such would be: wind, water, solar, ethanol, fuel cells etc.

I think the USA is starting to understand that oil will not last forever and that by using it we actually harm our world. I believe that this leads to a rethinking process that will rather soon start pushing the idea of alternative energy sources. Will stocks of such companies suffer every time prices of crude oil falls? Or is the idea of owning such stocks might get more stable?

Thanks
Micron

This is a very difficult question to answer. I do have one thought. There is no way ethonol is economical, at least as manufactured in the U S. It requires more energy to make the stuff than than it provides. It is a Bush scheme to make the public believe we are doing something. Of course the government provides a subsidy at taxpayers expense. Good for the farmers however. Might buy fertilizer stocks or Deer.

I did buy stock in a wind turbine company. Hopefully it was a good idea. Only time will tell. VWSYF

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Can anyone please tell me of one form of energy the enviromentalist will not attack?
I guess solar power is now evil.
Wind power kills birds.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/28/9949/

Wind power doesn't kill birds. The towers are hundreds of feet high and the wind farms are cleared of undergrowth - there's nothing to attract birds to the site.

It's not about CO2 with these people. It's not even about pollution. It's about lifestyles. They prefer a David Kaczinsky lifestyle and it's not enough for them to live it, they need to impose it on us. They see humanity as a pox on the earth.

“If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it…” – Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute.

“The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world”
– John Shuttleworth, founder of Mother Earth News.

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, Secretary General 1992 UN Earth Summit

“Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed.” – Pentti Linkola

We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land. —David Foreman, Earth First!

The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing….This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.
—Economist editorial

We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight.—David Foreman, Earth First!

Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.—Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!

If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. —Earth First! Newsletter

I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.
—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental”– David Foreman, founder of Earth First!

“If there is going to be electricity at all, I would like it to be decentralized, small, solar-powered”– Gar Smith

“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States…”– Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

“Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape.”
– John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club.

The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state. - Kenneth Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept (as quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982)

We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion — guilt-free at last! — Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue)

Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planets…Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. — David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans.—Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project

If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.—Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels.—Carl Amery

Every time you turn on an electric light, you are making another brainless baby.—Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists

To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem.—Lamont Cole

Cannibalism is a "radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation." — Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995

This is an anti-human, anti-progress, anti-civilization movement. The only thing that has changed is the pretext for their argument:

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.—Lowell Ponte in “The Cooling”, 1976

If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. … This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. —Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

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