CURRENT MOON

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Ten Years

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We need two things and we need them damn fast: we need people who know how to install this stuff (I'm thinking PV rooftop/yard panels at the household level because that's what I want and I'm a selfish pig) and the power storage/battery system and the necessary wiring to tie it all safely back into the existing grid.

Better yet, somebody who knows how to do this and can teach others, who go home and teach yet others. Habitat for Humanity style: you learn it working on other houses in your area and then on your own.

And there's infrastructure that needs either creation or publicity if it already exists, primarily in the insurance business. If I have a solar panel on my roof and a big wind comes along and blows it off or crashes a tree limb into it, is it covered as part of the house? Etc. As our friends in the insurance industry taught us after Katrina they will use every excuse to charge us out the wazoo for such coverage and then take every excuse not to pay a claim. This needs to be dealt with.

Community level first would be ideal; that company Doug linked to a few weeks ago that makes the collectors on sheets so thin they run them on what amounts to a printing press, is geared up to power any community with a patch of empty ground a few acres in size. They're not down to the individual residential or commercial level yet.

But this is the best coverage of Gore's speech I've heard yet. All Katie C wanted to do was talk about the clearly impossible (paraphrase) price tag for this venture. No mention of the price of doing nothing....

Great post Hecate. You got me all fired up, in a benignly solar-powered way of course. :)