3052: Energy
The sun had been good to us. Helios provides our daily warmth, our seasonal food and all the stored carbon in deep in the earth that sustains our journey through the Cosmos. We are not unlike an interstellar craft floating toward some new home in the Galaxy. We have had our bags packed for us, and a few sandwiches to sustain us along the journey. We all have our ticket for passage and have boarded the transport. One can continue to depend on our supplies but eventually we have to start doing for ourselves. We will have to adapt to the changing conditions. The Greenland Vikings settled in a cold and inhospitable land, not unlike the land from which they sailed. But it was not the same land. They came with an understanding of how to survive in such a place, but continued to rely on the knowledge they arrived with. After consuming all their travel supplies, each year the food supply became less as compared to what their population needed. Instead of moving on or going back they stayed until extinction came.We have been given a finite supply of fuel to keep us going. It is not wise to use it up. There are they among us who are satisfied that what we have will last long enough for us to discover the rest. They are like children looking for hidden eggs at Easter. Each year that passes brings a higher extraction cost that we choose to absorb like the frog in the pot of cold water who fails to jump out as the temperature slowly increases and he cooks. We continue to rely upon finding something of value rather than in producing it. We only take from the oceans and never give back anything but our excrement. The millennium to come will make that bounty from the sea a mere legend passed down generation to generation by grandparents who assert that "back when I was a child great factory fishing fleets combed the oceans to bring us our protein.” Man has grown up crying out to god to "give us this day our daily bread" in some vain attempt to be allowed to eat rather than producing the foods we need for ourselves.
It may not be in this 21st century that we are forced to switch to some other method of powering our civilization. But certainly what we have done in the last hundred years will not suffice through the next several hundred years. What we do today will impact the lives of our children’s children’s children. It is safe to say that coal, gas and oil will not last a thousand year hence. And even if it would, the negative impacts of the wastes will continue to accumulate to disastrous outcome. Barring a solar event that causes the sun to become a few degrees cooler wherein we would want all those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, some change in our modus operandi must be made. “We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children.[1]”
Photovoltaic electric generation doesn’t add to the warming of the earth either by polluting gases or by releasing pent up heat that must be radiated in the atmosphere. Wind turbines and hydro-electric plants are the same. Along with a change over of generation techniques, we need to use much less energy per capita. In the 1970s, electric utilities created conservation plans to lower the per capita consumption of electricity because a 10% reduction of use cost far less than a 10% increase in capacity. The same formula applies to sewage treatment, gas heating fuel, and potable water.
Every dwelling in existence today will be long gone by 3052. Even our historically significant commercial and cultural structures will likewise be replaced. Better insulation will make the pPer square meter of heat loss area smaller. Tthe heat transfer will be significantly reduced making energy demands much lower. Better materials with lower heat transmission qualities will be developed to make dwellings and commercial space. Light to hold back the terrors of the night will be invented that consumes less energy than an incandescent bulb does today. Light Emitting Diodes pierce the darkness at a fraction of the energy of conventional 19th Century Incandescent bulbs. If we want 10 billion more illumination devices we will have to do even much better than the compact florescent bulbs we are just now beginning to use. Electricity may not even be converted for light any longer, nor vice versa. Chemical reactions also emit light that is not dependent upon a distant dynamo powered by water, nuclear steam, coal or even the wind and the sun itself.
Up to these first years of the 21st Century the production and distribution of electricity has been subject to the legacy of central generation and standard single voltage supply. Americans all live in houses where the appliances, motors and illumination devices all start out with a "house current" of 110-120 Volts AC. After connecting any device to the power, that device alters the voltage and current type to suit its particular design. Wireless phones make 5 VDC to charge its battery. Portable computers typically want 12 to 19.2 VDC for its operation. Motor driven appliances typically accept the house current as is and resistance heating devices do too.
Most Light Emitting Diodes individually need 3 to 5 VDC so they are arranged in such a way as to total up their needs to be the house current that is summarily supplied.
Even when a homeowner chooses to go "off the grid" with his own electric generation the system must be designed to operate the standard equipment at the standard voltage. However, if the house is built from the ground up as a self-contained energy producer/user, then the solar, wind, or small hydro-electric system can produce Direct Current at low voltages that new devices need.
In that time, 1,000 years from now, onsite solar and wind generation needs only produce DC at about 12 volts and be easily stored in what today are thought of as conventional batteries. Every sky-access surface will be active in producing photo-voltaic electricity. Hundreds of thousands of miniature wind vanes will continually product small contributions of power into the local use grid. Systems not yet thought of will add their part to the total generation demand. Even such devices as piezo-electric poles that silently sway in the wind or in a tidal pool will create electricity as they bend and reflex. All of these modes of generation are in existence in the present, but have not been widely implemented.
[1]
Variously considered an Indian proverb, or attributed to Antoine de St.
Exupery, Ralph Waldo Emerson or David
Bower.
TweetTweet This Post
No comments:
Post a Comment