SOLAR ENERGY - MORE THAN ENOUGH TO GO ROUND!

By: John B Quinton (pictured below).
Chairman of building contractors William Skinner & Son.
HQ: Ayrshire, Scotland. Southern Office: Cambridge, England.


IT is often assumed that there is a link between climate change and the use of fossil fuels to produce energy – which there is, to a limited degree. The more fossil fuel we burn the more carbon dioxide we produce, and that contributes to the so-called ‘greenhouse gas effect’ – the entrapment of warm air close to the earth’s surface, with a consequent gradual warming of the earth.

But the main drive to find alternative sources of energy is not climate change – about which many independent scientists believe we can do very little, because of the sheer scale of it. It is the fact that our reserves of accessible fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal – are inadequate to sustain our present demands for energy, let alone any predictions of the greater amounts of energy our developing world will demand.

Finding alternative sources of energy we can use for power is not primarily linked with the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, though they will help, but is an imperative driven by presently dwindling available sources.

If we don’t develop sources that don’t depend on fossil fuels the laws of supply and demand will result either in fuel, and therefore energy, becoming so costly that it will limit human activity – or it will be rationed.

In either of these situations it will make total sense to produce energy by some other means, preferably using sources that will not exacerbate global warming.

There are only three sources of energy on earth. One is our superheated core, which produces hot springs and the material for volcanoes, but which can be, and is, harnessed as geothermal energy.

Another is the mutual gravitational effect of the earth and its moon, which produces tidal movements which can be harnessed to produce useable power. Purists argue that the reflected light from the moon is also a source of energy.

The third - and overwhelmingly the greatest - source is the sun, which radiates the equivalent of 1,000 kWh of power to every square metre of the earth’s surface annually.

The sun alone provides 2,125,000,000,000,000,000 kWh annually. World energy consumption in 2006 was the equivalent of 29,308,000,000,000 kWh. What that says is that the annual consumption of energy of the entire world in one year was about 8 hour’s worth of the available energy from the sun. And the sun’s energy, beyond the cost of collecting it, is free.

Wind-turbines can recover some of this, because the energy of the winds is essentially the result of the transfer of some of the sun’s energy into air movement, but the real answer, at least so far as electricity generation is concerned, has to be the use of photo-voltaic cells that convert the sun’s energy – which is more than just the heat we feel in sunshine – directly into electricity.

This technique has been known for hundreds of years, but only recently has it been developed for practical use. It is effective, but costly – but the major oil companies, amongst others, are investing billions in research to improve PV performance, with the current aim of cutting the cost of a PV panel to 10% of what it is now, and doubling its efficiency. This will give a cost reduction to 1/20 of the present figure.

Incidentally, the energy falling on the British Isles in a single year is 230,700,000,000 kWh – which is many times more than our total demand – and the annual rainfall on GB is 146,495,000,000,000 litres. Not only do we have a super abundance of energy waiting, as it were, for the plucking, but far from having any water shortage we have a gross over-supply of that too – so that water management consists (still) principally of getting rid of the stuff rather than finding enough of it to use. The fact that water is virtually indestructible – i.e. literally renewable within the limits of our own eco-system – means that we never actually consume any of it. We just borrow it for a while.

Meanwhile, the principal sources of alternative, mostly free and renewable, energy are:

1. Direct Solar water heating.
2. Direct Solar electricity generation.
3. Electricity generation from the wind.
4. Electricity generation by water flow – by conventional hydroelectric means or tidal movement.
5. Ground/air/water source heat-pumps.*
6. Geo-thermal.**
7. Bio-mass.***
9. Farm and human waste and residues.****
9. Nuclear fission/fusion.*****

* Uses some electrical power to produce energy to the value of 3/4/5 times the amount used to pump it.
** The energy of the earth’s core is not renewable.
*** Produces carbon-dioxide, but only that taken in as the plant material used was still growing, so it is, ‘carbon-dioxide neutral’.
**** Carbon dioxide, (and other harmful gases), produced.
***** Very cheap to produce, produces no carbon dioxide but not renewable. Massive waste disposal problems.

John B Quinton
E-mail: jbquinton@btinternet.com


ABOUT WILLIAM SKINNER & SON

Building contractors William Skinner & Son have made a successful diversification into the solar heating market, attracting a large number of new clients throughout the UK, and have demonstrated their commitment to the wider field of renewable energy by installing a 6kW Proven wind turbine at their Ayrshire HQ in St. Quivox on the perimeter of Glasgow Prestwick Airport, and including PV panels in the design for their proposed office extension.

The aim now is to offer general advice on the suitability of any of the available renewable energy techniques, or any mix of them, to solve individual energy supply problems, and they are developing a consortium of available local expertise to help them develop that.

For further information contact:

Sandy Cunningham
Managing Director
William Skinner & Son
Cunningham House
Highfield
St Quivox
Ayr KA6 5HQ
Scotland

Tel: 0845 051 9060
Fax: 01292 671133

E-mail: scunningham@williamskinner.co.uk
Website: www.williamskinner.co.uk

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