The trend toward homes that are powered by alternative energy sources, ranging from wind turbines and solar collection cells to hydrogen fuel cells and biomass gases, is one that needs to continue into the 21st century and beyond. We have great need of becoming more energy independent, and not having to rely on the supplying of fossil fuels from unstable nations who are often hostile to us and our interests. But even beyond this factor, we as individuals need to get ?off the grid? and also stop having to be so reliant on government-lobbying giant oil corporations who, while they are not really involved in any covert conspiracy, nevertheless have a stranglehold on people when it comes to heating their homes (and if not through oil, then heat usually supplied by grid-driven electricity, another stranglehold).
As Remi Wilkinson, Senior Analyst with Carbon Free, puts it, inevitably, the growth of distributed generation will lead to the restructuring of the retail electricity market and the generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. The power providers may have to diversify their business to make up for revenues lost through household energy microgeneration. She is referring to the conclusions by a group of UK analysts, herself included among them, who call themselves Carbon Free. Carbon Free has been studying the ever-growing trend toward alternative energy-using homes in England and the West. This trend is being driven by ever-more government recommendation and sometimes backing of alternative energy research and development, the rising cost of oil and other fossil fuels, concern about environmental degradation, and desires to be energy independent. Carbon Free concludes that, assuming traditional energy prices remain at their current level or rise, microgeneration (meeting all of one's home's energy needs by installing alternative energy technology such as solar panels or wind turbines) will become to home energy supply what the Internet became to home communications and data gathering, and eventually this will have deep effects on the businesses of the existing energy supply companies.
Carbon Free's analyses also show that energy companies themselves have jumped in on the game and seek to leverage microgeneration to their own advantage for opening up new markets for themselves. Carbon Free cites the example of electricity companies (in the UK) reporting that they are seriously researching and developing ideas for new geothermal energy facilities, as these companies see geothermal energy production as a highly profitable wave of the future. Another conclusion of Carbon Free is that solar energy hot water heating technology is an efficient technology for reducing home water heating costs in the long run, although it is initially quite expensive to install. However, solar power is not yet cost-effective for corporations, as they require too much in the way of specialized plumbing to implement solar energy hot water heating. Lastly, Carbon Free tells us that installing wind turbines is an efficient way of reducing home electricity costs, while also being more independent. However, again this is initially a very expensive thing to have installed, and companies would do well to begin slashing their prices on these devices or they could find themselves losing market share.
Considering the danger represented by the climate changes and the global warming phenomena scientists and businessmen worldwide started to look for alternative energy sources. Besides the wind power or the nuclear energy is has been recently taken into consideration a new power generating substance: helium 3.What exactly is helium 3? Helium 3, an isotope of helium, a gas used to inflate balloons, has a nucleus with two protons and one neutron. The solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun, strikes the planets and their sattelites in the solar system and thus helium 3 is deposited in the superficial soil (also called regolith). As the Moon’s atmosphere is not very dense this flow of particles easily penetrates the gas layer and reaches the ground. Over millions and billions of years that adds up. But for its denser protective gases layers the Earth would have been under the direct action of the Sun too thus being contaminated by toxic products.Louie Alvarez and Robert Cornog discovered helium 3 in 1939 but it was only 1957 when it drew the attention of researchers. It has been estimated that only a few hundreds pounds exist on Earth, most the by-product of nuclear-weapon production. Experts estimate that there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the Moon, enough to provide the world with power for thousands of years from now on. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load (25 tons) could supply the entire United States’ energy needs for a year, according to Apollo 17 astronaut and Harrison Schmitt.The advocates of this energy source support the idea of building reactors based on the reaction of deuterium and helium 3 even in the middle of a big city. It is said that the fusion reaction using this gas is very efficient and it releases very little radioactive by-products. This gas could also be used for powering spacecrafts.Commercially unfeasibleMan on MoonThe US goverment and some European countries as well have studied the energy potential of the Moon. And yet it is highly unlikely that any government or group of states will spend the money necessary to go to the Moon and establish a base on it to support scientific research or the construction of the first production facilities. Hopefully the next few years will witness a media campaign to support the enterprise in the context of the global warming and the lack of terrestrial resources. Human society is straining to keep pace with its ever increasing energy demands which are expected to increase eightfold by 2050 as the population swells toward 12 billion. The moon and its resources just may be the answer.At the moment the most important aspect that prevent the exploitation of the lunar resources is the money. The long term investors have to consider spending a lot of it for 10 to 15 tears before any adequate return of investment. Companies in the field of energy production are reluctant to consider investing in such an enterprise. The other element that encourages skepticism is the lack of appropriate technologies. The fact is that once applied for economical purposes – not only in labs – and used on large scale these technologies become very expensive. Both proponents and skeptics have to consider that for example to produce 70 tons of helium 3 one million tons of lunar soil would need to be heated to 800° C to liberate the gas.If successful the researchers’ efforts to find new alternative resources on the Moon could pay off the interested investors but as we said before nobody is prepared to invest money in soap balloons and the Moon in the sky.
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