Repair (Heal) Your World

I thought you might all be interested in the latest status about renewable energy worldwide. Please see the REN21 Renewables Global Status Report: Energy Transformation Continues Despite Economic Slowdown. See http://www.ren21.net/globalstatusreport/g2009.asp Here are some of the facts: * Global power capacity from new renewable energy (RE) sources (excluding large hydro) reached 280,000 MW (280 GW) in 2008 - a 16% rise from 2007 and three times the capacity of the United States nuclear sector * 73 countries now have RE policies * the US will invest over $150 billion over 10 years in RE * RE investment in 2008 was $120 billion, up 16% over 2007 * Wind energy capacity grew by 29% in 2008 to reach 121 GW. (South Africa's total electricity capacity is 44 GW.) * Grid-connected solar PV grew at 70% to reach 13GW * Solar hot water in Germany (which has less sun than South Africa) set record growth in 2008, with over 200,000 systems installed. (South Africa installed a few hundred in 2...

Let's get around to looking at some calculations. I suggest that you sit down with a piece of paper and a pen so that you can work through this example with me. The problem: During a 4 hour Eskom power failure, you want to run your computer for 4 hours and it uses 300 Watts (per hour); you also want to run 4 lights for 4 hours. Each light draws 8 Watts. You don't want to use a noisy, smelly and pollution generating generator. You want to build a system yourself and one day add a solar panel or solar array to it. You are prepared to spend a bit extra to make that "start" in Renewable Energy. Renewable Energy "Thinking" Notes: Eskom energy is still much cheaper than generator energy, so we'll start with charging the battery using Eskom energy. Eskom energy isn't clean, but we need a starting point. We can add solar and other technologies to this system later. My Eskom energy (electricity) at the moment is about 70 cents per kwh. This in May 20...