Tom Edison: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy"

[kristopher]

"“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

An interesting slice of our energy history. I'd love to hear him opine on our contemporary energy systems...

By HEATHER ROGERS for The New York Times
Published: June 3, 2007

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced his vision of development in New York City over the next 25 years, he highlighted a plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent. To anyone who has studied the history of power consumption in the United States, his proposal sounded a curious echo. New York, after all, was home to one of the country’s first central power stations, built by Thomas Edison in 1882. No individual deserves more credit, or blame, for America’s voracious electricity consumption than Edison, who conceived not only that generating station but also the notoriously inefficient incandescent bulb and a slew of volt-thirsty devices.

Yet Edison, godfather of electricity-intensive living, was also an unlikely green pioneer whose ideas about renewable power still resonate today. At the turn of the 20th century, when Edison was at the height of his career, the notion that buildings, which now account for more than a third of all energy consumed in the United States, would someday require large amounts of power was only just coming into focus. Where that power would come from — central generating stations or in-home plants; fossil fuels or renewable resources — was still very much up for debate.

A 1901 article about Edison in The Atlanta Constitution described how his unorthodox ideas about batteries could bring wattage to the countryside: “With a windmill coupled to a small electric generator,” a rural inhabitant “could bottle up enough current to give him light at night.” The earliest wind-powered house was fired up in Cleveland in 1888 by the inventor Charles Brush, but Edison aspired to take the technology to the masses. He made drawings of a windmill to power a cluster of four to six homes, and in 1911 he pitched manufacturers on building a prototype.

Edison’s batteries also fueled some cars and trucks, and he joined forces with Henry Ford to develop an electric automobile that would be as affordable and practical as the Model T. The Constitution article discussed plans to let people recharge their batteries at plug-in sites along trolley lines; the batteries could also be refreshed courtesy of the home windmill.

Talented not only at devising new technologies, Edison was...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/magazine/03wwln-essay-t.html

[MineralMan]

1. Many farms had electric lighting powered by windmills.

Then rural electrification put an end to that. Now, the trend is growing again.

[kristopher]

2. The article touches on that and Edison's fondness for batteries.

There are a lot of things that go into how systems develop. The direction we took at the time you point to resulted largely from the government jobs programs during the Depression and was built on by strong economic expansion of a massive industrial base developed during the war.

We have the technologies and the need *today* to follow the sustainable path, the only question is how long will it take to overcome the aggregated power that centralized systems have amassed to themselves in order to make it a reality.

[MineralMan]

3. Yes. The problem was that the small generating windmills

could only produce enough power for a few small electric lights. That was a good thing, of course, and brought light to the farm. However, the windmills and the associated batteries required maintenance and new uses for electricity started appearing that couldn't be powered by these small systems. When rural electrification brought AC power to these rural areas, the windmills were soon gone. With the AC power, you could run your milk separator, the washing machine, and other devices that could never have been powered by a small windmill system. The demand exceeded the ability of the technology available at that time.

It still does, really, for most rural situations. Yes, you can do solar or wind, but, you're still stuck with the batteries, and the solar power still can't generate enough to run all the things you need. The new wind power isn't powering the farm directly, but is feeding the grid. It's all very costly and requires a big outlay of money upfront. That's what's slowing down this move to localized power generation. It's what will slow it down for some time to come. The wires come to the house. You use the electricity and pay the bills. The payback time for an alternative is still too long and the initial cost still too high for it to become universal.

It's still a long way off.

[kristopher]

4. That was part of the economic expansion I referred to

I think you have it backwards, however. The applications for the power - refrigerators, washing machines etc. - were a product of the electrification, not a reason for it.

I also disagree on your view of the present capabilities and shortcomings for rural areas.
There is no shortage of space, so as solar prices deline it is poised to be a major contributor in all geographic areas. Depending on the local conditions you also have lots of wind, undeveloped small hydro, undeveloped geothermal and biomass.

As to farms they are set to become power producers in their own right. There is no reason to think that the investment we've made in transmission and distribution is not part of the way renewable resources in rural areas will function. A distributed grid will provide the farms with unique economic opportunities to turn their organic waste into various forms of carbon-neutral fuels that can both run their entire operations and contribute to the local grid.