Little Bit of Green

While the dialogue goes on about how a solar panel can save you cash and how solar energy isn’t a feasible resource. The Department of Energy has announced that they are devoting money to a two year study on solar power. The mission of this effort is to work out if solar power is as efficient as the solar power industries claim it to be.

Their final goal is to work out if a solar panel can bring the price tag per KW hour down to at least $0.10. This doesn’t seem like much of a saving, until you compare it with the billions of kilowatt hours consumed everyday in the United States. You can see how much money and energy could be saved.

The government is looking into the possibility of concentrated solar power - this technology uses an array of mirrors to beam daylight into a central receiver. Now there are a lot of good things going on but the expense of building the technology for the heating of the liquid and a turbine generator isn’t going so well. George Bush is a proponent of new alternative fuel technology, which reflects the current political climate in America. This is ironic, since George Bush was born during the Texas oil boom.

The funding will consist of $2 million and there will be nine separate private firms working together. The Solar Vehicle 8 of Lakewood, Colorado will be having a look at the development and advances to a system of picking up solar power. Other corporations that are making a contribution to this project are 3M, Alcoa, Brayton Energy, Hamilton Sundstrand, Infinium, Sky Feel, and Solar Millennium.

With the looming economic crisis, the race to discover alternative sources of energy is accelerated. Because the Iraq war may continue and cause oil prices to soar, results of these efforts will be easier to comprehend once the United State’s solar power initiative is fully up to speed.

The government ultimately has to take a hard-line approach of working with alternative energy solutions and lessening the requirement for foreign oil and traditional fuels. As the masses witness the rise of gas prices and the decrease of solar powered technology costs, they will favor this new technology and, in the process, create a green-friendly planet, one with a better environment for its denizens.

For the general public, the decision to wait for the new solar panel technology to become commercially available before installing it in their home is a tempting one, but this new technology may take another ten years before you see it in the DIY stores.

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