Utility Scale Solar Power:
What kind of an Earth will our grandchildren have in a hundred
years? Close your eyes and imagine an ideal planet 100 years from now.
Chances are you are imagining flying cars, an abundance of food, and
clean air to breathe.
It’s an ideal future isn’t it? Sadly, we can’t make it come to
pass just by closing our eyes and imagining it. The only way to get
there from here is to work at it.
Doesn’t it make more sense to use the energy from the sun that
we are getting right now? When we do this, we are eliminating the
“middle man” of fossil fuels and thus becoming more efficient. The
technology to use the energy from the sun already exists; all we need
to do is implement it.
Coal burning power plants continue to bring electricity to
millions of Americans. When the coal is burned, it releases pollutants
and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Complaints of activist groups
have led to new government regulations that force coal burning power
plants to find ways to decrease these pollutants. The extra cost of the
pollutant reduction is passed on to the customer, and people are
finding it harder to pay the electric bill every month.
There are cleaner alternatives to coal burning power plants
and utility scale solar power is a great alternative.
How it works
A large collection of solar panels are placed in an open
field. As they absorb energy from the sun, the heat is transferred to
fluid filled tubes. Steam from the tubes power the turbines that
produce electricity. This is much the same way that electricity comes
from coal, only there is no wasteful byproduct.
If our grandchildren are going to live in that ideal future,
we are going to have to use cleaner energy sources. If we start right
now, maybe our children will live to see it. It is also quite possible
that some of us could live to see it ourselves.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a utility company that takes
the first step. A private land owner could easily set up a solar power
plant and sell the electricity to the utility company or even to the
public at large.
Clean energy is going to happen. As government puts more and
more restrictions on the burning of fossil fuels, more technology for
producing electricity will be going to cleaner energy sources. Solar
power already has the potential to be the number one form of this clean
energy. The technology is already here and it has been here for almost
thirty years. Solar power is the wave of the future, and that future is
now.
