Saturday 8 September 2012

Sustainable Power And The Energy Crunch

By Lulu Shapiro


It's shocking how much money it costs to fill a automobile's tank nowadays. Inflated fuel pricing is having an effect on just about every facet of life. Food costs as well as other physical product prices are inflated because of increases in transportation and shipping. For people who drive, most Americans, disposable earnings are reduced. It is tough to discover a silver lining in all that.

However, there's one positive side-effect. Quite similar to the oil crunch in the 1980s, the substantial cost of fuel has turned the Public's eyes back toward renewable power and sustainable energy. In plain speak, the discomfort of fuel pricing has exceeded the complacency. There is now a greater interest in fossil fuel alternatives.

Alternative energy is most often defined as the capability to generate energy in the present without compromising that ability of our children and grandchildren to produce power. It generally describes using natural sources of energy which replenish themselves. Unlike oil, that is certain to finally be consumed entirely, other sources, like sunlight, wind, rain, and tides will last for as long as our world will.

Solar panel technology involves harnessing sunlight to either yield electrical power or heat water. The effectiveness of solar technology can vary depending on climatic conditions and location. Nonetheless, the issue can be overcome by feeding the national electric utility grid from locations with suited characteristics. For individual property owners, a key downside of solar is definitely the initial, installation costs that can be quite high, although the long-term savings and tax breaks can fully offset the initial expenditure during the lifetime of the solar energy system.

Considering the recent arrival of electric cars and trucks and vehicles with gas backup generators, solar technology now carries the possibility to replace virtually all gas use in non-commercial motor vehicles. The latest generation of these vehicles will run eighty to 100 miles per charge. The general American drives under 40 miles each day with work commuting.

Utilizing wind mills in order to create electrical power is a progression of a thousand year old technology that makes use of windmills to pump water. It has different but similar topographical limitations to solar power. All the same, windmill farms in mountain passes can produce power for the nation's power grid just like desert solar farms.

As far as water goes, technologies have advanced since the hydro-electric dam. Which is still an exceedingly valid technology that has been around for decades. Presently, research is under way to utilize the tidal activity in the ocean to generate electrical power with a buoy system.

The clear theme here is that renewable energy technology has been in use for countless years. All the same, only the current pain of high gas costs have inspired consumers to move away from the much more convenient fossil fuels. Practically all progress comes with some distress.




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