A Flowerish, Energy-Producing Thing

I do not find the fact that oil and coal are generally less expensive than renewable energy sources a very compelling reason to avoid development of such things as solar PV.  I have news on that.  Coal, for home heating, was once far more expensive than wood and an infrastructure for using coal resources took dozens of years to fully establish.  Fuel oil climbed into use—supplanting coal—on a similarly slow and expensive path of transition.

The transitions to and from energy sources—including the development of the electrical grid we presently enjoy—took years stacked upon years and such shifts have not been without some manner of subsidy.  Moving from one source of energy to another is neither easy nor inexpensive.

In writing this, I am not suggesting an ambitious ban on one source or another.  I am not suggesting the wholesale elimination of the coal industry.  I am, instead, suggesting a gradual (yes, subsidized) shift away from sources that will one day run out on us and toward sources that shall not.

How does that not make sense—especially given the brilliant new technology in our hands?

Posted today are photographs my modest addition to sources of renewable energy: a flowerish solar PV array (of my own design) soon to be fully connected to my house.

Thanks to Geddy Parker and Ascension Electric for all the help from beginning to end.

 

 

--Mitchell Hegman