Solving the Energy Crisis

Yeah, this is a long post, so I put it on a Saturday ... you know, when most people won't read it ...

The nation is up in arms. We need to save the planet! One of the key considerations for any presidential candidate is "What will he do about global warming?" The only allowable answer, of course, is to put an end to our use of fossil fuels. Al Gore has called for us to be fossil-fuel free (at least in energy generation) in 10 years. Global warming is clearly caused by us driving cars fueled by petroleum products and by producing energy using petroleum products and all that our Industrial Age is doing to ... well ... make things while spewing "greenhouse gases" (a term we all know but, I suspect, don't really know how to define). So, the answer, it seems, is "alternative energy".

It's a simple answer. We all know what that means. T. Boone Pickens, a legendary oil and gas executive, says that all we really need to do is switch to wind and solar power. We, of course, know that he's being a bit simplistic. We need to switch to electric cars, too. Changing electricity production isn't the only problem. Don't be silly.

Cielo Wind Power, a company based in Austin, Texas, touts wind power as a really big answer to our problems. They say they're have "developments equaling approximately 1,148 megawatts of wind-generated electricity." According to their FAQ, all told, wind power is producing about 6,000 megawatts of energy in the United States, enough to power 2 million households. In fact, "According to the U.S. Department of Energy, all U.S. electrical energy needs could be met by the wind in Texas and the Dakotas alone." Now, consider that for a moment. It's really cool to think that Texas and the Dakotas have all the wind we need ... but how do you harness all the wind in Texas and the Dakotas? How much land in those two states is required to harness that power? How do you transport the power when it is harnessed? What happens when the wind stops? The American Wind Energy Association (remember, they're in favor of wind energy) says that to power your house with wind energy would cost "from $3,000 to $5,000 for every kilowatt of generating capacity, or about $40,000 for a 10-kw installed system." That's for a single home use. And while we're currently producing enough power for 2 million households, the Census Bureau estimates that by 2010 we'll have something around 115 million households. Obviously, wind power alone isn't the answer.

We also need solar power. Solar power is the "end all" in a lot of people's minds, but there are many factors to consider. Solar power, for instance, costs about $9 per peak Watt to generate. Did you catch that? It was "Watt", not "Kilowatt". The website, HowStuffWorks.com, answers the question, "How many solar cells would I need in order to provide all of the electricity that my house needs?" "You need about 41,000 square inches of solar panel for the house. That's a solar panel that measures about 285 square feet (about 26 square meters). That would cost around $16,000 right now. Then, because the sun only shines part of the time, you would need to purchase a battery bank, an inverter, etc., and that often doubles the cost of the installation." That's no small area and no small cost. Add to that a key question: How much sunshine is available? The truth is that, with the exception of a small area in the southwest, most of the United States simply doesn't have a suitable amount of sunshine to do the job. We could maximize that particular area (because it is, after all, desert), but then you have the problems of power storage and transportation. If one house needs 285 square feet of solar panel with good sunshine, how much would 115 million homes need? And at what cost? Yeah, that's a big number.

One of the really popular ideas today is the electric car. Why aren't we all driving them? Most people aren't aware of the problems of the electric car. The simple truth is that, currently we don't have electric cars that can go much farther than 40 miles on a charge. That is fine for short trips around the local neighborhood, but won't get a lot of suburban Americans to work and home. Consider this. Did you know that a gallon of gas has the energy equivalent of 33.5 KWh? "Yeah ... so ... what does that mean?" That means that a gallon of gas in a standard engine is far more energy efficient than a battery. Take, for instance, today's best lead-acid batteries. These hold about 35 watt-hours (WH) per kilogram of battery weight. That's 35 WH, as opposed to the 33500 WH in the gallon of gas. The highest capacity battery is the zinc-air battery, holding up to 240 watt-hours per kilogram. In other words, if you were using a zinc-air battery and wanted it built to the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, it would have to weigh about 140 kilograms. For the metric impaired (trust me, I went to a website to convert that number), that's over 300 pounds of battery ... to match 1 gallon of gas. In other words, the reason we do not currently have an electric car that can take us the same distance on a charge that your gas engine can take you on a tank of gas is not a product of some vast oil company conspiracy. It is a matter of the potential to store energy -- physics. In other words, electric cars are far more difficult than we imagined.

My point is not that we should not pursue these alternatives. My point is these alternatives are not the answer. They are part of a complex system of an answer. They are by no means simple. They are by no means "end all". They are extremely expensive and contain complications we're not ready to handle yet. We ought to engage them. We also ought to drill for more oil, expand the use of hybrids, build nuclear power plants, and sink money into research on alternatives. The reason we're not fossil-fuel free yet in the 21st century is because fossil fuels are so good at storing and releasing energy, and we just don't know yet what alternatives can do the same thing. It's a tough question without a simple answer, despite the claims of people like T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore.