I’ve expressed my displeasure of the current solar market before. Now the folks at MIT are pledging to revolutionize the technology for the very near future. For me, this is both great news, and not so great news. Supposing MIT is successful and in a few years announces a breakthrough in solar power, making it–as promised–abundant and affordable, the burning of fossil fuels, and potentially even nuclear power, will quickly go bust. That’s a lot of jobs going away, worldwide, including, potentially, mine (Though I’m not in the power generation business myself, the company I work for is owned by a Fortune 500 energy corporation.
On the other hand, it would mean that mankind’s carbon footprint would, what, half? It would shrink astronomically, regardless. And let’s face it, if we all had our own power generation resource, we would be more independent (to me that’s a good thing). If my power went out due to a storm, I’d have the materials and skill to get myself back online and wouldn’t have to wait for the power company to get to my street. Sure, I might still be down for a few days, but I’d have something to keep me busy, right?
So what will our lives be like in 20 years? Speculating that MIT’s pledge is a smashing success and cheap, renewable power is available worldwide, the world will change. Everything will change. Our lives, for better or poorer, will change. This could be the foundation for what will become the Singularity, the dawning of a new civilization. Things are happening rapidly, hold on!
Now I think of it, maybe energy companies need to think about getting into the solar panel installation market. It seems like it would be a conflict of interests, but if solar really becomes the Next Big Thing, they’re going to need something to fall back on, quickly.
Photo from Flickr.
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April 25th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Ever since I saw it proposed, I’ve been a big proponent of use point generation. Little loss of energy through transmission, only generate what’s needed, and all the tech is low emissions. Was really hopeful that by now I would be buying a fuel-cell for my house. Now I’m really interested in mini-turbine technology for My Next House(tm) (you know, the one that when you make it bigger than Dan Brown that you’d build with all that money).
April 28th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Matt, Have you thougnt about a wind turbine (windmill)? You should get enough wind where you live to generate some power. Might not replace all your needs, but would help? I bet you could build it yourself. Also, when I build around there, I can hook into your windmill ;-)
April 29th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
@Rick: I’d love a windmill. But…I looked into wind power; every map I’ve seen forcasts Alabama as a poor area for windmills. There are any number of maps to pick from, but here’s one that’ll give you a good indication of what all the rest of them will say: http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap2/2-01m.html
April 30th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Well, darn. I seem to always recall a brreeze up on the hill when I was growing up there. Do you know if there is a device you can use to measue your wind (you know what I mean by that, so don’t go off on a tangent)? If not, maybe we should invent one so people could check to see if they have enough wind for a windmill.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I don’t know if there is, I just based my research on the maps online that I’ve found. I’ll bet you could gather that data from a meteorological resource, however. But I didn’t get that deep into the research.