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Talkin' 'bout my generation
Good news! Soaring energy costs could get even worse, spurring a new era in which people make clean power for themselves.
In the 1920s, millions of rural Americans got their energy the same way they got their butter—they made it themselves. Off-grid when off-grid wasn’t cool, they used some 600,000 windmills to run radios and power, maintaining sputtering lights with an electric current that ebbed, flowed and sometimes simply disappeared with the prairie wind. Fully 90 percent of those windmills disappeared within a generation, as even the most isolated farmers eagerly plugged in to the new centralized power system.
But today the same technologies that help iPod-bedecked college students steal music are reviving the model of microgeneration—clean, decentralized power that people make themselves—by linking homes into a vast network that keeps buzzing even when the wind stops blowing. Microgeneration, meet the YouTube generation.
“We’re talking about a new meaning of ‘power to the people,’” raves Jeremy Rifkin, alternative energy activist and adviser to the European Union and many European governments. Forget about wind farms and solar plants run by conventional utility companies, he says. “In the new energy regime, the people are the utilities and their houses are the power plants.”
From Rifkin’s perspective, the problem with those early windmills wasn’t only the technology, which was primitive, but the zeitgeist, which had gotten going in a totally different direction. A global industrial revolution was afoot, and its ethos wasn’t rural self-sufficiency but centralization.
According to Hermann Scheer, a member of Germany’s Bundestag and president of the European Association for Renewable Energies, “The route to modernity was like the Olympic principles, ‘faster, higher, stronger’—centralized technologies and societies.” Growing central governments built centralized power plants that ranked as the largest human structures ever created, quickly electrifying everything from big new factories to sprawling new homes to giant media companies that piped a steady stream of information to everyone on the vastly expanded grid. The model for both energy and information was the one-way street.
Today, however, pioneers on the green energy frontier are remaking the power grid in the image of the Internet. “Can you imagine the generation that grew up on file-sharing, Wikipedia and MySpace surrounded by coal-fired or nuclear power plants?” asks Rifkin. “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit the gestalt of anyone under 40. It’s just old-fashioned, centralized top-down technology.”
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Magic trees converting light, heat and wind energy into electricity
We will set the future for multi renewable energy collection not as a set of straight endless rows of brittle shiny panels in a desert, or visual polluting wind turbines but with super efficient natural looking.
We make use of nature’s perfect design - a TREE – innovative use of the latest nanotechnologies has made it possible to produce a Highly Efficient Nanoleaf which will be assembled onto our artificial natural looking trees for the purpose of delivering power.
The 'Nanoleaves' including petiole are a true ingenious concept, a little power house, a combination of thermo- photovoltaics, for conversion of light and heat, joint with piezovoltaic, tiny generators that generate electricity from movement of the wind. That’s three conversions in one system (Tree) and course, our landscape still looks wonderful and it would be nicely cool in a shadow of this forest on a hot summer day.
What does this mean for the future? The field of biomimetics is the application of methods and systems, found in nature. To capitalize on the wealth of designs and processes found in nature, engineering and technology, has spawned a number of innovations far superior to what the human mind alone could have devised. The reason is simple. Nature, through billions of years of trial and error, has produced effective solutions to innumerable complex real-world problems. The rigorous competition of natural selection means waste and efficiency are not tolerated in natural systems. Solar Botanics is replicating natural manufacturing methods as in the production of chemical compounds by plants and animals; this will enable Solar Botanics to directly tap into nature's ingenuity. In the near future, Solar Botanics will “grow” because of improved efficiency - 300 times more efficient than a solar panel and in tune with nature to serve our energy needs through the application of pragmatic natural solutions developed by evolution.
Trees and shrubs can be planted most of the time without permission because they fit in with our local scenery. Trees, plants and shrubs have a esthetical function the enhance our city and meeting places, or are just there to give us a nice view when we look out of our window. Trees decrease our visual awareness if it comes to visual or noise pollution. The psychology effect of trees takes care of a better micro climate, extreme temperatures are reduced and absorbed; trees and shrubs give protection against wind, and sun. Trees are a source of inspiration for artistic creativity. Trees carry a culture of history they can show the history of a place and are often proof of past history. Trees are a symbol growth and energy, trees have a economic value. The presence of trees often increases the value of property, especially mature trees that at the same time deliver more energy.
Solar Botanic Energy Systems plans is to deliver the first trees by the end of 2010 and offering the market a aesthetic and triple efficient solar, heat and wind collecting systems. For example; a Solar Botanic palm tree with 36 leaves will generate more than 7000 kWh per year, the price of such a tree including an inverter is around $ 10.000,00
Added value of solar botanic trees; providing shade, cooling the air, wind break, crop protection, prevention of heat islands in cities, road glare, noise barrier, protection of dune vegetation. Solar botanic trees can be fitted with additional equipment to filter the air, (taking out CO2), or to filter or assist in water management.
Our trees are: • Triple efficient. • Durable. • Low investment/high return. • Easy to install. • Weather resistant: rain, hail, dust, lightning, wind. • Good monetary values for private homes. • Varies sizes, colors and species • Aesthetic natural design, in harmony with nature. • Application for designer gardens, penthouses, balconies • Wide arrangement of Solar flowers, shrubs (solar shrub fencing) water plants. Applications for; • Urban and Rural • Recreational parks, city parks • New housing estates • Plug in trees for cars – streets & parking areas • Golf courses and resorts • Mountainous regions – far away places • Coastlines • Highways • Airports • Deserts • Penthouses, balconies, verandas • Private gardens • De-forested areas • Areas of commercial interest; Islands, nature resorts • Ponds, lakes, seas and oceans • Crop protection • Solar Botanic flowering plants to harvest colorful your electric power • Solar Botanics can be used for: Windshield, Shade, anti glare, objectionable views • Sound barrier, windbreak, wind obstruction and air conditioning and much more Various renewable energy producers are investing heavily, including Google, GE and Pickens the new kid on the block, joining the renewable energy market, their marketing machines running on maximum speed, daily TV adds on CNN and BBC are proof of the importance, to gain consumer interest, to promote green energy and so on.
However, their best efforts of promoting safe and clean energy is also reason for concern as some renewable energy systems are not all that friendly, and some industries starting to feel resistance towards their systems. A TREE IS SO MUCH MORE Human intervention and exploitation in the ecosystem will produce changes in order to meet the desired objectives. According to the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, in many parts of the world the consumption of ecosystems services are managed in an unsustainable way. Therefore it is strongly necessary to find direct drivers of ecosystem management that can provide more effective cost-benefit opportunities for multipurpose systems, which can meet multiple goals, including the pervasive environmental, social, and economic objectives of sustainable development.
I hope this gives you some idea of upcoming renewable energy systems that can be used responsible, without destroying our planet to much
Alex van der Beek www.solarbotanic.com
posted by solarbotanic on 9/22/2008 12:16 pm