Will oil always be available as a practical fuel source?

Lighting can be done with LED's now, very low electrical use. I will have to agree that a lot of the old structures are just not built to in the best architecture to provide an efficient means of producing and/or using solar, ...but you say, that northern climates won't benefit from solar yet the Carlisle House which was the resort that runs totally on solar and is even able to feed back to the grid is located in Boston... can't really get more north than that in the US.

Because there is no way to judge the efficiency of proper solar applications for hundreds of thousands of buildings. As I've showed, a great deal of buildings can supplement their power simply by solar, lights, DC electronics and appliances... but would the list just stop there or...

...could a change in machinery and factory electrical needs also begin to be supplemented with more efficient DC current applications, like lighting, computers, network server hubs, routers, ...could the electric fork lifts and transport carts also get a charge from solar, could the assembly line be operated by solar application as well, can factories benefit from solar? Absolutely...
http://www.solarnovus.com/audi-factory-powered-with-solar-panels_N6595.html
http://www.eagletribune.com/local/x...r-powered-ballet-shoe-factory-now-in-Lawrence
http://www.biothinking.com/solarfactories.htm

A lot of developing nations are looking at renewable as the future back bone to their electrical needs as well, they'll build their systems and infrastructure around it... where our is set to maximum power force generation of the overkill kind. ...we're set on "ludicrous speed"... to push miles and miles and miles ...and miles and miles... of AC current.

 

From your one link

"Both the Brussels region and Belgium are committed to achieve its climate targets, namely to produce respectively 8 and 13% of the electricity generated from renewable energy sources by 2020. For the Brussels region solar energy is therefore one vital component."

Also, the solar panels don't power the whole plant. They say that all the power produced will go towards manudafuctering the A1. I am glad they are doing it though as it will save them money and it will cut down on their usage from the grid. It isn't going to be nearly enough though.

This is a solar array only manages to provide 12.5% of the power at peak times. http://www.fyidriving.com/article/volkswagens-chattanooga-plant-solar-powered/

That means that to power 100% of the factory you would need 8X that many solar panels....for one stinking plant. Now remember what I said about land usage. That one facility creates 13MW of electricity. Meanwhile on the same or a bit more land you can have a nuclear reactor that can produce 1000 or more MW. Do you honestly think its an efficient use of land? What happened to land being precious? If this is how you want in that every single factory on this earth is going to need to have an extra 100 acres of land lying around and it still won't produce nearly enough power to operate the plant. Take a typical industrial park and then multiply it by a factor of 9 and tell me that that is efficient land management.

Regarding electrical usage by manufacturing it hasn't been the 50s since the 1950s. Do you really think businesses just sit around using crappy inefficient equipment. When I worked in printing and in rubber molding they replaced the machines every 10 years or so, sometimes sooner sometimes later, precisely because new designs came out that were more efficient and made more product at less cost. Printing is especially sensitive to that because those machines use enormous amounts of energy. The notion that business never updates their equipment and infrastructure is just nuts. Where are you getting these ridiculous notions from. Outside of a mom and pop shops, no one is using decades old equipment anymore. Buildings have to be updated to meet OSHA and state building regulations. If you have crappy wiring then you replace it or pay a daily fine of potentially thousands of dollars. No one is sitting around using WW2 wiring anymore.

A ballet slipper factory........wow. Intense, I hope they don't use up all the worlds energy in one go with all those sewing machines.

The Ford one only has enough for just the lighting which is not even near the most energy expensive part of the plant.

http://solar.calfinder.com/ask/how-well-do-2

"According to Natural Resources Canada, an average, grid-connected (no batteries) photovoltaic system in the Calgary area (southwestern Canada) has the potential for 1200-1400 kilowatt-hours of solar electricity each year. Obviously, that is not enough to power the average home, but could certainly make a difference, especially in that four months of relative sunshine. Still, don't look to solar to provide all your energy in Canada, unless you are living an especially energy-conservative lifestyle

The Carlisle House is a one off prototype using extremely expensive materials and design and has features such as super insulation (whatever that is) that are not used in typical homes being built. Unless you plan on pricing everyone except 1% in buying homes.

This is your average rooftop solar array. http://www.renewsing.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/0968cc9f2a_rooftop-solar.jpg

I don't know how much more is needed to show you that you cannot power the world on renewables. Maybe in a hundred or two hundred years they will figure something out but right now there is absolutely zero chance of the world even making a majority of their power from renewables much less than all of it.

Watch this movie from an environmental engineers perspective. http://www.switchenergyproject.com/about/the-film#play-video

They talk about a solar powered garage which might be the same Ford plant you linked too....small world.

 

Yes, I know, ...we all know, ...but you don't seem to know it doesn't need to replace all of the electrical needs, only enough that it has a practical application for it. Diminishing inefficient AC needs for a percentage locally produced efficient electricity for some applications makes a big difference over time, in costs and pollution.

That is actually pretty good considering the cost of pushing inefficient AC. With solar being under 15% efficiency right now and expected to be geared past 50% in the near future, it only makes sense to begin to supplement.

Can factories benefit from running local solar... of course they can... it doesn't matter if solar can't power the whole plant, it only needs to power a percentage of the plant if at best, any reduction in using inefficient means of high voltage AC will be cost effective and limit pollution.

The building is already there. The roof is doing nothing more than shedding water... why not put some solar on top of it and remove a percentage of outsourced electrical needs?

The... building... is... already... there... Why not laden it with solar capacity if it saves money and environment over time, and reduces the need for high voltage AC?

In most cases, yes.

The very job I do requires me to mess around with three 10 year old line matrix printers... crappy old line matrix printers in a "state of the art facility"... while thermal printing would be far more efficient and cost effective for the same application. Businesses will get away with not replacing equipment if they don't have to... you know that. Most businesses stick with what has worked and rarely change from that model or pattern.

It's a model, for shoes, shirts, and clothing factories, isn't it? Again, don't be so short sighted.

They wouldn't be using it since the 1980's if it wasn't cost effective to them. It is a model for apartment buildings, hotels, resorts, and commercial buildings.

And I don't know how much more I can explain that renewable energies are an important part of supplementing our costs and pollution from oil, coal and nuclear... you pick the short sighted version of the plan, which is ok... but some of us prefer to look into the future and realize, that not only can it be done, it will be done. Making forthright statements denying so is akin to calling the earth flat.

 

Answer is no oil wont be the fuel source there are plent of fuel sources . Like Boron etc.

Unfortunetly all of those fuels will make war , imperialism will teare apart many more families because of those sources.

Boron is a element that contains lots of energy to power anything and with todays technology it spends less actually they made cars working with Boron , Water , Sun Power , Electricity, even the grease you dont use.

But unofrunetly Electricity Sun power , Water and grease are trying to be conceal because there are lots of oil companies that can make another war on middle east for oil and U.S is more likely to help them to pay less for oil.

So if fuel runs out they will turn to Boron and the world greates sources of Boron is Turkey . Unfortunetly U.S has already putten a dictator called Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey one of the protests reasons in Turkey is protesting U.S ruining Turkey .

So Boron will be the next source . We dont know what will be the next after that , but i guess after oil runs out Middle East will have some revolutions...

 

What about fusion power? It seems, to me, that we are merely wasting our tax monies on oil based "edsels" by continuing to expend as many resources on oil instead of cleaner fusion power.

 

Sorry if my responses are out of order.

The Carlisle house was a joint venture between the MIT and the US Department of Energy, not a private individual. The vast majority of people can't afford to build homes like that.

This is a more feasible house ironically built in Carlisle as well. I found this initially when googling your mention of it till I noticed it was built in the wrong year.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/04/earth_day_green_house_building.html

The house costs 15% more than a normal house, with rebates so it would have been much more without them. The solar panels were an additional $26,000 on top of that. Basically a home that would have been $200k is now $256k (with rebates). The only reason they managed to do it was because they received lots of rebates that covered much of the cost. They wouldn't have done it if those subsidies hadn't been available. They make between $2k and 3k back in selling electricity which means that they will get their money back in 18 to 28 years. Remember this is with rebates so it would be much longer if they had to foot the bill themselves. The country simply cannot afford to subsidize these types of homes on a massive scale, certainly not in these economic times and most Americans simply don't have spare cash like that lying around.

Regarding the solar panels and land usage I was referring to the one at Chattanooga not the ones you mentioned. I have no problem with the Ford one or the Audi one because as you mentioned its dual use land using already existing structures. The Chattanooga array was the one basically just wasting a lot of land.

I think at this point we are in agreement though. I hope that renewables make up as much as the energy pie as possible. My faith in solar has been restored somewhat with the article about the organic solar arrays which require no mining. I really hope that that takes off and they get it figured out. I am just under no illusions that they will replace coal or nuclear any time in the near or medium future. 100 years from now people will probably be using fusion reactors or anti-matter reactors and look back at us and wonder what all the fuss was about.

You mean dot matrix printers? Ask them if they will by my grandpa's that I still have lying around?

I was mocking the ballet shoe store because that is mostly a human intensive industry hence "sweat shops". Its not a good example of a industry that uses alot of electricity compared to other manufacturing.

Also regarding AC line loss. The Chattanooga array is literally right next door to the plant. You are losing very little if any measurable amount of current over that short of a distance. The loss is around 2 to 3% over 1,000 km. The line loss on the Chattanooga array would be virtually nonexistent. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/harting1/

"In a paper from the American Electric Power (AEP) company published in 1969, the authors make an estimate that the amount of power loss from non-corona based effects is about 4MW over 100 miles in a 1GW transmission system. [7] Converting to metric units, this gives a loss of about 25MW or 2.5% over a 1000km transmission line. This number is consistent with the resistive loss given in a contemporary, self-published report from the AEP. [11] In this report, the resistive loss was listed as between 3.1MW/100 miles and 4.4MW/100 miles, depending on the wiring configuration. This corresponds to between a 1.9% and 2.8% power loss over 1000km."

 

In 1980, (SDA) working under contract for the US Department of Energy (DOE), developed the first building-integrated PV system and constructed a prototype residential roof for evaluation by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "
http://www.solardesign.com/sustainable-development.html

But what really matters is that the concept was proven and it was proven that it works in the north, and it was done nearly 30 years ago, ...has the technology become cheaper? ...by leaps and bounds. Can buildings like residential and commercial be powered by solar? ...the simply answer is YES, as demonstrated by this building... again, 30 years ago.

Here it is in practice today -
http://fox5sandiego.com/2013/03/27/...ar-apartments-nearly-completed/#axzz2ZG9eb2pu

The video is pretty nice -
http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=91059&sitesection=kswb_localnews&VID=24663190

Ditto.

No, I do mean LINE matrix printers. Which are still common for most office hard copy data printing needs... which should be replaced by thermal... no ribbons or ink to store, stock, replace, and/or recycle.

And yet, it is a model for shoes and cloths manufacturers... doesn't matter if it translates to other manufacturing, it is still a industry that can benefit from being solar powered... which can translate to other industry manufacturing and factories that could use solar power, furniture/car upholstery, luggage and golf bag manufacturers, carpet and rug manufacturers, blanket, pillow, mattress, manufactures... anything that is stitched or sewed can obviously benefit from solar power as proven by this ballet shoe company.