Yes this is ME.

I had this blog account flagged as a possible spam account. This is not a spam account, this is where I am gathering together and report on information that I find in alternate means to generate and utilize energy.

Our modern society thrives on energy. In the past, say two hundred years ago, society used little energy means. We lighted our homes with oils derived from animal and plant sources. We heated our homes with wood, charcoal or coal. We had no air conditioning and instead designed our homes to make use of natural ventilation.

We had no refrigeration, instead we cut ice made by the natural process of pond and lake water freezing in the winter. We harvested this natural product, stored it in ice houses lined with straw for insulation, then delivered and sold it to consumers during the warmer months. Pioneers also used root cellars, dug down below the frost line, to store roots and other produce that would keep in a cool place. They also used a evaporative cooling technique by building cooling houses over a flowing stream or river. They covered it with a coarse cloth, like burlap and channeled water to flow down over this cloth. The water evaporating from this cloth caused the air inside the house to cool.

They also salted and smoked meats to preserve them. Many products were pickled in brine for preservation.

Today we rely on energy to do what we did in the past by other means.

Horses no longer are our main means of transportation, we rely on fuel energized vehicles to get us from place to place and transport our products from manufacturing plants to consumers.

Energy is one of our prime businesses. The production and consuming of energy is probably the most important business in the world today. Without inexpensive energy, our world would collapse. Businesses would be forced to close. Transportation would grind to a halt. The first world buys the highest percent of the world's production of energy. The third world is striving to raise their energy levels.

Alternate energy sources will free us from the old traditional corporations that control the cost of today's energy. Many of these mega-corporations are seeing the "green" light and getting in on the move to alternate energy. They see that as a home goes solar or wind for a large share of their energy production, that their energy production will be less and less needed.

If every home in America had solar cells, photovoltaic systems installed on their roofs, along with solar water heating and solar air conditioning. If every home had a full electric vehicle plugged in at home recharging its batteries from this solar/wind electric production. The need for a centralized electric production would drop dramatically.

Consider that during the day, an average home roof, can generate more electricity than it consumes. With a large enough battery system, that same home can operate normally, with no draw from the electric grid system. This means that the need for centralized power generation drops to zero for this home. This means that the electric utility, does not have a consumer for its product and it can't collect its money from that home for that month. It means that the fuel producer that the electric utility uses, does not have the sale for that month.

Continue on back the line of energy distribution and we see that a whole industry would be out of a major source of business and income, and would have to transition themselves into some other business model to survive.

But this also means that the energy production business can supply more customers without building more infrastructure. In the real world, not every home or business will install home based solar electric systems. Many will not see the need for the expense or additional complexity to be added to their home.

But some of us are pioneers in this area, and will push on to find a better system of energy production. Better for the economy, better for the environment, better for our society.

Solar Air Conditioning

That's right, you can cool your house or building with the heat of the sun!

There is an old cooling process that those in the RV industry use. It is the moving of gasses from one state to another by heating them. It is called adsoption or absorption.

Here is the part of the Wiki article, Solar Cooling, that discusses this process.

Solar Thermal Cooling

Main article: Absorption refrigerator

Active solar cooling wherein solar thermal collectors provide thermal energy to drive thermally-driven chillers (usually ADsorption or ABsorption chillers.)

There are multiple alternatives to compressor-based chillers that can reduce energy consumption by 80%, with less noise and vibration. Solar thermal energy can be used to efficiently cool in the summer, and also heat domestic hot water, and the building in the winter. The Audubon Environmental Center in Los Angeles is one example among many).^[5] Single, double or triple iterative absorption cooling cycles are used in different solar-thermal-cooling system designs. The more cycles, the more efficient they are.

In the late 1800s, the most common phase change refrigerant material for absorption cooling was a solution of ammonia and water. Today, the combination of lithium and bromide is also in common use. One end of the system of expansion / condensation pipes is heated, and the other end gets cold enough to make ice. Originally, natural gas was used as a heat source in the late 1800s. Today, propane is used in recreational vehicle absorption chiller refrigerators. Innovative hot water solar thermal energy collectors can also be used as the modern "free energy" heat source.

Efficient absorption chillers require water of at least 190 degrees F (88 degrees C). Common, inexpensive flat-plate solar thermal collectors only produce about 160 degree F (71 degree C) water, but several successful commercial projects in the US, Asia and Europe have shown that flat plate solar collectors specially developed for temperatures over 200 degrees F (featuring double glazing, increased backside insulation, etc.) can be effective and cost efficient.^[6] Evacuated-tube solar panels can be used as well. Concentrating solar collectors required for absorption chillers are less effective in hot humid, cloudy environments, especially where the overnight low temperature and relative humidity are uncomfortably high. Where water can be heated well above 190 degrees F (88+ degrees C), it can be stored and used when the sun is not shining.

For 150 years, absorption chillers have been used to make ice (before the electric light bulb was invented).^[7] This ice can be stored and used as an "ice battery" for cooling when the sun is not shining, as it was in the 1995 Hotel New Otani in Tokyo Japan.^[8] Mathematical models are available in the public domain for ice-based thermal energy storage performance calculations.^[9]

Coupled with zero energy building design, this could significantly reduce the buildings needs for electricity as all the cooling could be handled by the sun. When the demand load is greatest, during the hottest part of the Florida day, this system is at it's best!