If anyone or a company wants to build a new power plant now there should be no excuse for them not to use renewable energy unless they are way up north or south where sunlight is limited through the year. Solar, wind, rivers and the sea can be easily harnessed to provide energy. The renewable energy technology is now advanced enough to replace fossil fuels when you factor energy in and energy out efficiency. Energy in is the amount of effort required to collect fossil fuels from mines and such and get it to the power plant to create electricity. Energy out is the amount of electricity produced plus the energy wasted. Nowadays you have to add another aspect of fossil fuel power into the efficiency equation that we used to take for granted, which is cost of pollution neutralisation. Gone are the days when you can simply build a chimney high enough or dump ash in a pit and call it good. Today the amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and toxic metals in ash have to be made to disappear! Our atmosphere and lands have already become too polluted to be able deal with our carelessness. So we have to care. But no government is brave enough to require fossil fuel power plants to factor in greenhouse gasses and other pollutant nullification cost because it will passed on to the consumer. Just imagine if we had to pay for that in our power bill! It would be too expensive. We'd say bring on green energy since green energy is neither wasteful nor waste producing.
Its amazing what 200 square meters of PV solar panels can do. Its powering 41% of George Airport's needs in South Africa. 20 meters by 10 meters can provide almost 50% of an airport's needs. Its not the biggest airport in South Africa, it moves 600,000 passengers a year and is the nation's agricultural air cargo hub. Check out the news report here. Meanwhile in Uganda Kiira Motor Coporation has unveiled a solar powered bus. The 35 seater "Kayoola" can go 50 miles straight on solar power alone and at night it can suck electricity from the grid to serve its needs. If I had the wherewithal to open up a business I would distribute these buses all over South East Asia and most of Asia. It would be a boon to have quiet energy and environment friendly busses instead of the bellowing overpowered diesel and gas monsters on the road driven by racing enthusiasts. I will keep an eye on this Kiira Motors hopefully they will grow, get better and eventually come up with solar powered trucks.
Northwards on to Morocco is the world's largest concentrated solar plant (CSP) that started its operation in 2015. The Noor Ouazazate Solar Complex is currently producing 160 MW of energy by concentrating sunlight to heat brine that runs a steam engine. By 2018 it will be producing almost 500 MW. Its not a PV solar complex. Instead of PV cells it uses a mirrors to concentrate sunlight to a point like using a magnifying glass to start a fire. Find out more about CSPs here. This is probably going to be the technology that powers our future.
In Rwanda their modest array of about 28,000 PV solar panels is producing 6% of the countries energy needs. Gigawatt Global a company that forms partnerships with governments around the world to create PV solar power fields built the power plant and is in negotiation with other African countries to build more.
The fact is we do not need fossil fuels to generate electricity anymore even in coldest regions. Even if we have to burn something to produce electricity we can burn existing vegetation that will grow back quickly such as grasses, leaves, twigs and food waste. I believe all fossil fuel power plants can be shut down in 5 years or less. It takes no more than two years to get a green power plant up and running. Such a global undertaking would reduce our annual carbon emissions by trillions of tons annually and will make a huge dent on the progress of global warming. To do this requires cooperation from the power plants themselves. They need some incentive to move towards shutting down and coming back online with renewable energy.
The need for renewable energy is not understated anymore and the world is trending towards it. At the current rate almost certainly within the turn of the century I imagine we will be running 100% on green power. It is highly likely within that time the internal combustion engine will have seen its days. The key now is how fast we will move to this paradigm. With climate change predictions becoming more and more uncertain time is of the essence. At the very least stop building fossil fuel power plants already.
Its amazing what 200 square meters of PV solar panels can do. Its powering 41% of George Airport's needs in South Africa. 20 meters by 10 meters can provide almost 50% of an airport's needs. Its not the biggest airport in South Africa, it moves 600,000 passengers a year and is the nation's agricultural air cargo hub. Check out the news report here. Meanwhile in Uganda Kiira Motor Coporation has unveiled a solar powered bus. The 35 seater "Kayoola" can go 50 miles straight on solar power alone and at night it can suck electricity from the grid to serve its needs. If I had the wherewithal to open up a business I would distribute these buses all over South East Asia and most of Asia. It would be a boon to have quiet energy and environment friendly busses instead of the bellowing overpowered diesel and gas monsters on the road driven by racing enthusiasts. I will keep an eye on this Kiira Motors hopefully they will grow, get better and eventually come up with solar powered trucks.
Northwards on to Morocco is the world's largest concentrated solar plant (CSP) that started its operation in 2015. The Noor Ouazazate Solar Complex is currently producing 160 MW of energy by concentrating sunlight to heat brine that runs a steam engine. By 2018 it will be producing almost 500 MW. Its not a PV solar complex. Instead of PV cells it uses a mirrors to concentrate sunlight to a point like using a magnifying glass to start a fire. Find out more about CSPs here. This is probably going to be the technology that powers our future.
In Rwanda their modest array of about 28,000 PV solar panels is producing 6% of the countries energy needs. Gigawatt Global a company that forms partnerships with governments around the world to create PV solar power fields built the power plant and is in negotiation with other African countries to build more.
The fact is we do not need fossil fuels to generate electricity anymore even in coldest regions. Even if we have to burn something to produce electricity we can burn existing vegetation that will grow back quickly such as grasses, leaves, twigs and food waste. I believe all fossil fuel power plants can be shut down in 5 years or less. It takes no more than two years to get a green power plant up and running. Such a global undertaking would reduce our annual carbon emissions by trillions of tons annually and will make a huge dent on the progress of global warming. To do this requires cooperation from the power plants themselves. They need some incentive to move towards shutting down and coming back online with renewable energy.
The need for renewable energy is not understated anymore and the world is trending towards it. At the current rate almost certainly within the turn of the century I imagine we will be running 100% on green power. It is highly likely within that time the internal combustion engine will have seen its days. The key now is how fast we will move to this paradigm. With climate change predictions becoming more and more uncertain time is of the essence. At the very least stop building fossil fuel power plants already.
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