Sunday, April 20, 2008

Fields of light

Big box stores at the Arena Hub Plaza in Wilkes-Barre
Township, built on the former site of culm banks.
Imagine this scene covered in solar panels.

When I was at the University of Scranton I would sometimes take lunch with my friends in the second-floor cafeteria at the the Gunster Center, also known as the Student Center. The North wall of the cafeteria was all windows, and it overlooked the campus's tennis courts. In Winter the courts would go unused, and after a heavy snowfall they would present themselves as a field of gleaming white snow - until, inevitably, someone got around to creating rude graffiti with footprints. But I digress.

One day I was having lunch - or maybe it was dinner - with some friends near these windows, and I looked out at the snow-covered tennis courts. I looked out at the dazzlingly bright scene, amazed at how much sunlight was being reflected. How much solar energy is falling on that area? I wondered. And who knows, maybe I did some paper napkin calculations. But I got to thinking about the photoelectric effect, and what went into manufacturing solar cells*, and I realized that while this is a magnificent and amazing way of taking sunlight and converting it into a usable form of energy - in this case, electricity - nature had been doing the same thing for a very long time through the amazing process of photosynthesis. What if, I wondered, we could find a way of getting plants to convert sunlight directly into fuel material? Well, plants do that already; you can burn most plants and release energy stored in their tissues. Or you can ferment some plants and, through a series of chemical and biological steps, create alcohol. But other plants create oils, or oil-bearing seeds and nuts from which the oil could be extracted. What if we could breed a plant that could use energy from sunlight to produce oils with characteristics suited to our fuel needs?

That was probably when I noticed that the footprints in the snow on the tennis courts spelled a rude word in 20-foot-high letters, and pointed it out to my friends.

*****************

The tennis courts ceased to exist years ago, replaced by a multi-story library. The Student Center was demolished earlier this year after a new one was built to take its place.

The need to find new sources of energy is greater now than it was during my lunchtime reverie in the mid-80's.

Northeastern Pennsylvania, like many places, is gradually becoming a land of big white boxes. I work in one, and others cover the mountainsides like huge, flat snowbanks. Several major highways run through NEPA (I-80, the great East-West corridor; I-81, a North-South corridor second perhaps only to I-95; and the Pennsylvania Turnpike), we are in close proximity to New England, New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia; and real estate prices are very reasonable (up slightly from "cheap.") These factors have combined to make us an ideal location for warehouses and distribution centers. In addition, we have the usual suspects when it comes to malls and big-box stores.

This is less of an environmental disaster than you might think. This is coal country, and coal mines produced enormous quantities of waste rock - slate mixed with coal that could not be separated out economically.** And these were piled up in great artificial hills called culm banks. Culm banks, some covered with groves of trees, some large enough to alter regional wind patterns, were a major feature of this area until a few years ago. Now many of the culm banks are gone, hauled off to be reprocessed for any usable coal, the remnant used as fill...somewhere. Replacing a culm bank with a revenue-generating mall or warehouse or big box store is not necessarily a bad thing.

But there is something inherently wrong with this new landscape of flat buildings and flat parking lots. When seen from above it resembles a lifeless desert, with a few trees and grassy areas thrown in for traffic control purposes. Sunlight rains down and is absorbed by the asphalt of the parking lot and the tarpaper (or whatever the coating is) of the flat roofs. Cars heat up, buildings need to be cooled. Energy is wasted in the form of both incoming sunlight and electricity used to run cooling systems.

What if we were to cover everything in solar panels?

Solar panels have some drawbacks. They are expensive. They are heavy. They are relatively inefficient. The electricity they generate costs more , for the moment, than electricity generated by remote sources. All these things can change.

There are other practical problems. Big box roofs are not designed to handle the weight of several hundred solar panels covering every square inch of available space, especially not when these panels are laden after a heavy snowfall. A parking lot roofed by solar cells would present new hazards to drivers, many of whom (as I have noted before) should not even be allowed to drive a shopping cart. And there is always the hazard of making a big, long-term investment in a technology that is superseded in its lifetime by something vastly better.***

Could there be financial advantages to investing in photovoltaic electrical generation on surfaces that are otherwise just solar heat sinks? Absolutely - if the surface is going to be around long enough to recoup the investment. What is the life expectancy of a big-box store? A mall? A parking lot? What is on the horizon in photovoltaic technology? How will photovoltaic-generated electricity costs compare to, say, coal-fired power plant-generated electricity, particularly as deregulation of the cost of electricity takes effect?

In the meantime the photons rain down from the Sun and fall on the roofs of the malls, and the roofs of the warehouses, and the roofs of the big boxes, and the surfaces of the parking lots, and the interiors of the cars parked on them. How much longer can we afford to let this energy go to waste?

*I only knew this theoretically; it would still be several years before I was working for a solar cell manufacturer in Delaware after a brief but humiliating run in grad school.

**Often the task of separation was carried out by children, called "Breaker Boys." This practice ended well before the Knox Mine Disaster ended coal mining in NEPA on January 22, 1959.

***I wonder how smart the folks who invested in big-screen TVs back in the mid-90's, when they cost so much that some people were having them built into their walls so they could have them rolled into their mortgages, feel today.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your post reminds me of two thoughts I've had about solar energy.

1) (in keeping with your recent post about SciFi story ideas)...decades ago I pondered the idea of a future in which wealthy humans could have chlorophyll-production somehow installed into their bodies --- what would be the social ramifications of the world-wide economy as the literally "green" wealthy folks chose to move to the sunnier climes? (guess we've actually seen this as rust-belt cities have emptied while sunny spots like Vegas and Phoenix have boomed)
2) Am I the only person in America who remembers when RONALD REAGAN REMOVED THE SOLAR PANELS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE ROOF??? Yes, children, once upon a time this country ENCOURAGED the idea of alternative energy thru tax credits for installing solar panels, etc. Reagan, demi-god of the Republicans, is responsible for DISCOURAGING that sort of wacky idea. His administration was the period when this country took a serious wrong turn, and his Administrations lack of foresight is why we are now beholden to other countries for our energy. Just think how cheap alternative energy sources would be right now, had we continued down the path of developing them 20 yrs ago.

Great idea to cover the man-made barren hard surfaces with solar panels, D.B. I've been thinking a lot lately that we need some sort of "macadam tax" to help pay to mitigate the damage paved surfaces do as far as water pollution and flooding (due to surface run-off). Perhaps if we had such a tax, it could be waived if solar panels were added to the offending non-absorbent survaces. If every parking lot in America were roofed with solar panels, we could be energy-independent in no time!

D.B. Echo said...

Joy, see if you can find Alan Dean Foster's "Village of the Chosen." It's in the compilation "...Who Needs Enemies?" (sequel to "With Friends Like These..."), but I first read it 25 years ago in an OMNI magazine compilation. It takes a bottom-up approach to "green living", as a not-so-mad scientist seeks to end world hunger in much the manner you have described.

I didn't know about the solar panels. Yep, that's Saint Ronnie for you. And remember, Jimmy Carter was the worst President in history. At least, that's what all the Republicans keep saying.

Anonymous said...

I just did a search for "Reagan removes solar panels from White House" to be sure I hadn't just imagined Reagan's treachery. "A bright vision of solar power emerged in the 1970's, as a patriotic response to the oil embargo. Jimmy Carter's energy plan included a goal of powering 20% of the nation with renewables by the year 2000. The president even put solar panels on the White House. The threat of solar tightened chests in the oil companies, as any free, clean, unlimited fuel source can be sure to do. At this point the oil and gas companies were ready to play hardball. They formed political action committees that contributed almost 3 million dollars to House and Senate candidates with "strong pro-industry voting." In California, Pacific Gas and Electric/Southern California Edison fought hard against the publics rights to own and use solar water heaters. By the late 70's Exxon, Mobil, Arco, Amoco and other oil companies had bought out many of the solar companies and the PV cell patents. Then, none other than former spokesperson for General Electric, Ronald Reagan, was elected president. The Carter solar tax credits ended, the $684 million investment Carter had requested was cut to $83 million, budgets were cut, studies squashed, and researchers fired. Then, adding insult to injury, Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House roof. Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day and former Department of Energy staffer from the Reagan era says, "It was a clear, calculated campaign by the DOE in the years of the Reagan administration to crush the solar energy program of the federal government, driving many of the most talented people out of the field". Our current president, former oil company executive George W. Bush, supports drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve, supports development of nuclear power, and opposes the Kyoto Protocol." (snipped from http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/886/69/ )

I mourn for the loss of "The Future" we COULD be living in now, had the nation stuck to its environmentally-friendly energy goals.

anne said...

I have long believed that every building over such-and-such square feet should be required to have solar panels and rainwater collection systems.

whimsical brainpan said...

We stopped being able to afford to let this energy go to waste about 20 years ago. Now we are paying the price.