This letter appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on Saturday. In response to Kurt Soucy’s letter about the cost of powering the entire provincial grid with Photovoltaic (PV) solar power, I’d like to voice my support for his idea. It’s also possible to power every Saskatchewan household with concentrated solar
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Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Solar PV Nearing Grid Parity
Cambridge and #PWC [PDF] say #solar PV will be at grid parity on most of Earth, in only 2 years! “It is clear that renewables will be an established and significant part of the future energy mix, in the [Gulf] region and globally.” Regina’s potential ranks about 6th in the
Continue readingNew Solar in Ontario
Ontario isn’t as GD senseless as Saskatchewan’s government. They actually have somewhat of a Feed In Tariff program underway. The Ontario Power Authority has just extended its solar feed-in tariff program and selected another 99 MW of solar power projects to receive payments from it. This comes from 330 new
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Parliament Should Go Solar
Following up on my 2010 blog post on solar for the White House, it takes almost 3 years to get solar added to a historic national building. That’s why we should all get started with pressing Parliament Hill’s renovation to include commercially available PV solar panels to the south facing
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: SaskPower Says Bigger Is Better, Even Losses? #PowerToGrow
As a followup to the Star Phoenix’s article on the hugely expensive, and (public) money losing CCS plant at Estevan, comes word of further cost overruns. The overruns, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, would have been sufficient to buy Regina its Stadium II, outright, fix its pension shortfall,
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: SaskPower, How’s That 14 Year Test Going?
Dear SaskPower, I’m interested in seeing the statistics regarding the electricity generated by the test panels installed on the Saskatchewan Science Centre, in the attached picture, and as mentioned in the below quote from your website a couple years ago. Solar research: In 2000, we installed a photovoltaic array at
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Are Gore, Suzuki, and Neil Young Hypocrites for Using Oil?
No. They are victims of circumstance, and despite their wealth and fame, they alone cannot change ‘the system’. A voice from the Facebook-sphere intones: “I appreciate your commitment and respect what you are trying to achieve but bashing fossil fuels while you continue to use them adds no value to
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Order Your Opportunities
My job, trying to change the world, is at least twice as hard as a conservative’s. I have to overcome others’ instinctual fear of change and new technology. Monday evening I proposed my condo board “investigate” using solar energy, if the association’s Winter expenses don’t exceed our budget. 2 Board
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: A Wee Design Flaw
The BrightSource Energy plant, a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert, works on the principal of focusing sunlight on a bunch of towers full of water until the water boils and drives a series of steam powered generators. Unfortunately, the reflected sunlight also focuses on the areas around the towers, and
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: World’s Largest Private Bank, UBS, Says Fossil Energy is Toast
The Swiss banking giant, UBS, says renewable energy is the hands down winner and conventional power generation is finished. In a briefing paper sent to clients and investors this week, the Zurich-based UBS bank argues that large-scale centralized power stations will soon become extinct because they are too big and
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: UPDATED: From The Mound Of Sound: A Basis For Optimism
The Mound writes: Hi Lorne. I spotted this article in the ‘comments’ section of The Guardian. It’s been a while since I heard anything this encouraging on the climate change front: It’s something akin to an epidemic. In the Australian state of Queensland, solar power has become cheaper than coal-generated
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Solar Tour 2014
Cowessess wind turbine. 800kW at 32mi/h Has Li-ion batteries. Solar farm and home system of 10kW Inverter anti-islanding. Prevents electrifying the grid while grid is down. Isolation ring for the meter can be installed so you can attach a generator to the house to let the inverter keep working during
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Some Real Hope For Renewables
I only have time for this quick post, but allow me to direct you to this story about what appears to be a breakthrough in solar power generation and this story that opens up a range of possibilities for electric cars. Here is some video to accompany the stories: Recommend
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Solar Freakin’ Roadways!
An exciting update on my recent post on solar roadways. Scott and Julie have an Indiegogo campaign (like kickstarter, but not) and they were looking for $1 million to fund production of their solar roadway hexagons. They have made their goal with a few days left and are currently just
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Solar Power for all Saskatchewan households
A recent poll has shown that nuclear power doesn’t have majority support in Saskatchewan, and I think that’s fine. My own family has mixed attitudes toward it. My parents, who own 17 solar panels, wouldn’t mind seeing nuclear power in Saskatchewan, while I oppose the waste-producing nuclear technology available today.
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Solar Powered Roads – A Followup
A while ago I wrote a post, Roads: Why Are They Still Asphalt? In it I expressed my desire for the future of road materials. No more hours idling in construction zones as they pour more oil to patch another season’s worth of a billion or so potholes. Better drainage and more
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Solar Powered Roads – A Followup
A while ago I wrote a post, Roads: Why Are They Still Asphalt? In it I expressed my desire for the future of road materials. No more hours idling in construction zones as they pour more oil to patch another season’s worth of a billion or so potholes. Better drainage and more
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: How We Keep the Tarsands in the Ground
NOT actually science-fiction. In your science-fiction news today: Imagine a power system that could harness the energy of 2,000 suns and provide fresh water and air conditioning in remote locations. Not only that but it would be completely renewable, be able to provide the entire world’s energy supplies and only
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: First Nations Get $0.3M for Solar Research #skpoli
The Conservative government generously gave First Nations in Saskatchewan enough grant money to build one impressively sized solar array that could power a half dozen homes. Ontario is going with $5,000M. SaskPower gave 10 times this much to the UofR to research how to put CO2 underground so more oil
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Oil and Tobacco
It’s worth remembering that marketers should not drive scientific research. Cigarettes are dangerous? We’d better make them appear less dangerous so they will still sell. I know, let’s filter the smoke. This fibre seems to do some filtering, or at least we can convince people of that. Wait, what’s the
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