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Energy blog
Understanding energy issues
Thomas M Crawford
8/3/2009
We use energy every day of our lives. Energy fuels our lives and our economy. It allows us to live a better lifestyle. We heat and cool and light our homes with it. We use it to pump water for drinking, bathing, and cleaning our clothes. It allows us to be mobile - to drive to and from work, the store, church, and other destinations. It allows us to have food and goods delivered to us from almost anywhere in the world. Obviously if your are reading this, you are using a computer powered by energy. Energy allows more people to live on this planet while avoiding starvation and disease.
But, most people do not understand energy. Yes they use electricity or gas or coal. They pay their utility bills. They get angry at expensive gasoline at the gas pumps. But on the most part, they trust that the energy will be there when they want to turn on their light at night or plug in their TV or computer. They have no concept as to what a volt, an amp, a joule, a BTU, a calorie, a watt, a kilowatt, or a kilowatt-hour is. They hear the propaganda about global warming and how green energy like solar or wind power will save the earth. But they have no idea what is practical and what is not. Their politicians and the media aren't any better. As an example, look at the following quotations I took from an Associated Press News Report dated 6 April 2009:
Wind turbine near Idaho Falls, ID - winter 2009.
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"Windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, the coal-fired power plants in the United States, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday. ... "
“'The idea that wind energy has the potential to replace most of our coal-burning power today is a very real possibility,' he said. 'It is not technology that is pie-in-the-sky; it is here and now.'”"
..... Salazar said ocean winds along the East Coast can generate 1 million megawatts of power, roughly the equivalent of 3000 medium-sized coal-fired power plants, or nearly five times the number of coal plants now in the United States, according to the Energy Department ....."
"...... Salazar could not estimate how many windmills might be needed to generate 1 million megawatts of power ......"
from: Salazar: Wind power can replace 3000 coal plants
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In other words, Salazar said, “Dah, I don’t know.” What the heck is Secretary Ken Salazar making a statement like that for if he doesn’t have some idea about the answer. And what the heck is the AP writing an article like this for if they are not going to use some type of journalistic sniff test on it. What happened to investigative journalism?
Yes theoretically it is possible to put up enough wind turbines to generate 1 million megawatts of power. The trouble is: How many wind turbines will it be? Where will they go? Do we really want to change the environment and beauty of the east coast (or anywhere else for that matter) by putting up the hundred’s of thousand of windmills it would take to replace the 3000 coal-fired plants?
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Now don’t get me wrong. I think there are plenty of practical uses for wind and solar power. But it is too expensive, and would have too many unintended consequences to put that many wind turbines up.
So this brings me to the purpose of this site. I am convinced there are good uses of various forms of alternative energy, and that for some applications, it makes great sense. But I am tired of propaganda fed to us by both the government and by other groups who use pseudo-science to gain political power or push forward a socialistic agenda. So this site is going to be both a practical applications site, and occasionally an opinion blog. I plan to post some practical ways to use alternative energy to save energy and money. I plan on posting some free tools to help individuals calculate what they can do to save energy, and more importantly money. And occasionally I plan to point out some of the BS propaganda that we keep getting fed about energy and the environment.
My first effort on this site is to do some educating on
solar energy, and provide you with knowledge and tools for doing some practical solar design. I have written an article titled:
Rectangular and polar suncharts for solar energy design. Gaining knowledge in this area can help you save money, whether you live in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, or Mexico. I have developed a tool I use to generate suncharts for doing passive solar energy design. I have provided enough suncharts on this site so that you can find one that is useful for your latitude, as long as you live somewhere between the equator and just north of the arctic circle. I also have other plans for this site, but “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” So I hope you will find this site useful, and return periodically to see what I have added. Thanks!
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