It was a learning experience, trying to start a newspaper in 1977.
The first issue, as I recall, had a very hopeful article about solar energy development and the possibility of solving our energy woes with new applications of solar technology.
The newspaper-on-a-shoestring idea did not pan out. As for the solar technology featured in the first issue, let's just say: there is still great potential there.
Now. Fast-forward about 38 years. I'm on vacation in Hawaii, the Big Island. Cruising along the highway that runs northward from Kailua-Kona toward Waikoloa, I see a large, quite impressive solar photovoltaic collector arrangement that seems to embrace a whole building.
This is interesting, I thought. That's a pretty impressive framework of solar power-generating collection around and above that building. I wonder what it is.
Although I did not snap a picture of it, I later learned that the building is the Visitors' Center and Office for the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. You can see it here:
http://friendsofnelha.org/
A few days later, that is to say yesterday, on Monday morning I attended a presentation there, hoping to find out what the place was all about. And I learned quite a lot about, among many other interesting things, renewable energy development and sustainable aquaculture and mariculture on the Big Island of Hawaii.
At 10 a.m., I watched and listened to an excellent presentation by Sarah Crawford, who is Executive Director of Friends of Natural Energy Laboratory in Hawaii (FON). Using a multimedia setup, Sarah delivered to me and eight other curious visitors the big-picture introduction to this forward-looking business park-enterprise incubator next to the Pacific on the sunny, leeward side of the Big Island.
The primary resource--you might say the heart and soul of this 870-acre site and its many infrastructure connections--is a constant,plentiful supply of very clean, cold ocean water that is pumped from 2000' or 3000' depths of the Ocean. The water is used prolifically by many companies, LLCs, and startups for aquaculture/mariculture research & development, as well as profitable commercial ventures.
One venture in particular--the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) project--is the largest and most productive of its type in the world, "pioneering the design of systems that use deep cold seawater for air conditioning and electricity."
Among the many projects and enterprises being conducted here are: a large-scale commercial abalone aquaculture facility; algae-based biofuels extraction facility; nutritional supplements company; commercial desalination drinking-water production; kampachi-fish farm; shellfish hatchery nursery for shrimp, oysters, clams, mussels; Maine lobster holding-tank; farming operations for tropical fish, seahorses, edible sea vegetables, black cod; and even a public charter school.
I was impressed. Here in Kona-Kailua the Hawaiians are doing amazing things with that cold seawater that's being pumped up from way down deep.
As for actual heat collected for hot water or for heating some other medium. . .not so much. More about that in a moment.
Nevertheless, solar energy is taking off big time in Hawaii--for electrical generation by means of photovoltaic collectors. Hawaiians are leading the way. Part of Sarah's presentation included some impressive statistics about increasing widespread use of roof collectors among homeowners and businesses. She said that recently an aerial photo of the town of Kailua revealed that every major commercial building in the town sported solar collectors on the roof.
The one exception--Home Depot. No solar collectors on the Kailua HD.
Now here I'm finally getting around to the title of this here posting: Solar Sadness
Because you see, ever since that time back in the day when I tried to start a newspaper with its first issue featuring the potential of solar technology--ever since that time-- I have thought that the only way that solar tech could really take off in the good ole US of A would be this scenario:
Joe Blow has a few extra bucks in his paycheck this week, so on Saturday he goes to Home Depot or Lowe's (our North Carolina favorite since that company started only 30 miles from my North Carolina home), and Joe invests is an easy-to-install solar collector or two, hauls it home or has it delivered, then climbs up on the roof, like any energetic homeowner (or hires someone) and connects the new hardware with a few turns of the crescent wrench and a screwdriver or two, assembling the new hardware in series with other collectors that he has previously installed.
In this way Joe Blow or John Doe or Betty Freedan or whoever, socks away some serious energy savings for the next 30 years or so, and so that's the way solar tech would take off in America: chicken in every pot, car in every garage, collector on every roof kind of middle-class thing.
Well, that has not generally happened on a large scale in America, yet. And if Home Depot is not willing to make use of the emerging solar tech on its own roof on the sunny side of Hawaii, then what hope is there for the sun in middle-class yankee homeowner energy conservation?
Now all that is about power, you know, electrical power, kilowatts blah blah--generating your own so you don't to buy so much from the regional monopoly or co-op.
But my disappointment about solar actualities came about half-way through the presentation on energy developments at National Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.
Near the Visitors' Center is a very impressive-looking mega-field of solar collectors, all of them hooked up together in series. The sight of this had been part of my original curiosity about the NELHA facility:
In Sarah's informative exposition of the on-site projects, her explanation of this installation revealed that it consists of rows and rows of long plastic pipes which had been cut lengthwise down the middle and painted with a special reflective coating. Sunlight striking the half-round concave curve of the 8" pipe would be focused on a smaller, suspended 3/4" pipe that contains a heat-carrying substance, water or some other medium. These half-pipes were mounted in such a way as to track the sun's rise and fall in the sky, thereby maximizing the solar energy gain.
http://keaholesolarpower.com/news/farming_the_sun/
Very impressive.
But here came my disappointment, the solar sadness: this incredible energy-gathering bank has been non-operative for about a year and half.
Why?
Something about running out of money or some such thing. I don't understand it. There's plenty of solar energy in Hawaii, and plenty of water. So what's the problem?
But I'm the clueless tourist here, whose mind starts to fill up with old 1970's-style conspiracy theories about mega-corporations getting in the way and so forth and so on. Although I don't believe all that; there must be a legitimate reason why this thing has not worked out.
As for the rest of what's going on at that NELHA --very impressive!
The cold seawater resource development that's happening at Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority is good, and also profitable for an array of startups for aquaculture, mariculture, and energy conversion enterprises This place is a a beneficial partnership between the State of Hawaii and all the businesses and LLCs who are working there.
Keep up the good work, NELHA! Keep them abalones and other critters coming.
Glass half-Full
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