Re: GP: tick tock

["John D'Angelo" <johnd@beutilityfree.com>]

on 10/9/02 20:58, kirk at kirk@3rivers.net wrote:

> Encouraging green power is a good thing-- and certainly people in cities
> have to import power. Unfortunately it leaves the centralized power paradigm
> intact--and that is not a good thing. Even structures in the city can use
> the sun. Using electricity and fossil fuel for low grade heat such as space
> heating and hot water is misapplication.
> 
> We often see gas burned to heat living space and offices when it would be
> far better to cogenerate with that fuel. Electricity could be generated and
> what is burden in a power plant--the bottom end heat--becomes useful load in
> a cogen application.
> 
> We better use our resources utilizing a system approach or we deserve to
> suffer the cosequences. We can no longer turn a blind eye to waste.

Wonderfully said. I am not a big believer in the "central power " concept
either. But it is a necessary evil for the foreseeable future unfortunately.
Once PV becomes so cheap then there will be NO need for central power. It
will die. May take the next 50 years, but it WILL die!

Also proponents of large wind farms seem to forget there are a lot of people
who do not want visual pollution and that is EXACTLY what a wind farm does,
it changes the visual landscape until the wind turbines are removed form
sight which could be quite a number of years.

OF course hard to argue with a clean energy source vs a dirty energy source.
A dirty energy source causes visual polution also but not to the some extent
a wind farm does because a wind farm is spread out over many miles where a
coal fired plant or a nuke plant has a small foot print.

John D'Angelo 


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