Sunnin' ourselves

I found out late on Friday that there was a renewable energy fair over the weekend out by Rockford. I have been looking for information about this topic for about the last 2 years, but it was such short notice. Given that I had patients on Saturday morning and cheese making plans on Saturday night, this presented a bit of a problem. Never fear, no scheduling problem is too large to overcome… We pushed the cheese making back by an hour or two and I took a quick 2 hour drive out to Rockford for some info.

In particular, I was looking for information on solar power. There seems to be a gap in between what I am looking for and what is actually out there. I am looking for a couple of things here. I would love to cut down on my electric bills for one, but also while I am not a card carrying tree hugger, it seems to me that there has to be a better way to power our lives without depleting the natural resources. This is what I found out. This is not terribly efficient, nor astatically appealing. I have seen solar panels before and know what they look like but I am looking for something that is not so obtrusive. I had found some shingles for the roof that are solar panels and are incorporated into the roofing and don’t stand up on the roof on the internet, but they were not at the show.

From what I gathered, to create electricity you need to have a minimum of about 6 of the huge solar panels facing south with no shade what so ever. This means no tree that shades even a corner of the panels, no telephone pole or electrical wires that run over the area. If you have any shade it will knock out the power that is made from a large portion of that panel. Hummm. This could be a problem unless you live in an open field. The other problem is that my roof is angled east/west so for a southern exposure to the sun I would have the huge panels up there as though I were trying to pick up signals with the outside universe. I am not poo pooing the idea, just rethinking and waiting for something better.

I am sure as the gas prices go higher there will be more and more innovation when it comes to renewable resources, but so far they seem pretty clunky and not terribly consistent. There is no power produced at night, and understandably so, but also very little options about how the excess power that is produced during the sunny hours can be stored for back up power.

Here is what I would be looking for. Something that looks good, either by incorporating into the roof or the side of the house in a non obtrusive way. A system that has some consistency to it where you wouldn’t be loosing power if it was a cloudy day or at night. If that is a storage system or something else that would make it a consistent source of power. The powers that be are working on it but so far this is all in my dreams… in the mean time I will wait.