Which renewable energy source is the least noticeable?
Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at
7:27 pm
Sorry for the stupid question, but I don't know how to phrase it. Which renewable energy source would be easy to harness on an island and not be to ugly. By ugly, I mean really obvious it's there. Horribly phrased but If you know what I'm going on about, an answer will be appreciated :L
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Filed under: Renewable Energy
No question is stupid. I live on an island and we’ve had our solar hot water system for about 30 years.
Recently photovoltaic panels produce a good amount of clean electrical and are getting very popular.
Both are least noticeable and not ugly. I hope this helps.
The power of hope, good will, the best intentions, and dreams!
Solar Panels, or Hydroelectric
wave energy…. they put special buoys out in the surf and harness the wave movement
Either wind or harnessing the natural tides and currents. That would leave the smallest foot print if any.
biomass or geothermal
If it’s a volcanic island, you could use geothermal energy. Simply use your volcano as a heat source to generate steam, and drive a turbine which in turn generates electricity.
I think wind power. I mean they are odvious but they can look very pretty. They are a great sorce of energy. The other options would be solar pannels. No to hydro electrics as they kill fish and you need a huge dam for it. Solar, or maybe even wave power.
When you use geothermal energy, I don’t think you see much, the way you would see solar panels or a wind turbine. It uses energy from deep in the earth, so you’d need to dig holes and run pipes. And I don’t know if it’s feasible on a small scale.
Binary Cycle Power Plants would be the least intrusive. They are geo thermal designs but use lower temperature heat sources to heat a liquid via a heat exchanger into a vapour or steam to drive a turbine to produce power. The principle of the technology is that you pump water down a drilled hole in the earth to where the earth’s temperature is somewhere from 70 to 400 degrees celcius. ( In Alice Springs in Australia there is a small geothermal power station that uses hot water to heat "isopentane" which flashes at 70 degrees celcius via a heat exchanger, through a turbine and then into a condesor to be recycled). The technology is simple, unobtrusive and available right now. The biggest hinderance to it being used everywhere is the coal, gas and uranium industries see it as a real threat to their multi-billion dollar investments in mines, gas and oil wells, refineries, ports and infrastructure, bulk shiiping carriers and road transport assets. With goe thermal power, you only need the materials to build the plant. There is no ongoing fuel costs, only maintenance and operational labour costs. Scares the hell out of the opposition.
Geo-thermal or wave energy capture would be the least noticeable in my opinion. Once the systems are in place it would be difficult to detect they are there. Both are either under the ground or surface of the water.
solar power or wind power
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think both solar panels and wind turbines are beautiful, much better than the flames or smoke emitted from large stacks from conventional power plants. If this is for a theoretical assignment, why don’t you add turbines and solar panels to high tension lines that would be required to take the electricity from the power plant to the users.