Tag Archives: Future Technology

Optimistic future…

Couple of interesting articles which, in these days of depressing news regarding global warming and the main cause, the use of fossil fuels, highlight the fact that progress on moving away from these dirty fuels is happening.

First up, Ian Johnson at the Independent offers the following article:

Scotland just produced enough wind energy to power it for an entire day

The headline is self evident, but a few details: Scotland experienced heavy gale-force winds on that day and, being summer, electricity demands were low to begin with.  Nonetheless, the end result was that wind energy amounted to 106% of the energy used by Scotland that day.

Meanwhile, the always fascinating Elon Musk offered the following in an article by Seth Feigerman and found on CNNmoney:

Elon Musk wants to sell you an entire “solar roof”

Living in Florida as I do, I’ve long wondered why the use of solar power -a no-brainer given the amount of sunshine we get- wasn’t even more popular.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that until recently solar panels were prohibitively expensive and, frankly, not all that good.  This is changing.

What I like most about Mr. Musk is that he’s a futurist with an eye on many things, not least of which is developing cleaner, more efficient forms of energy.

His Tesla electric cars are, to date, the gold standard for these vehicles and I’m incredibly eager to see if his company can fulfill the promise of electric cars with a 250 mile range (he says this will happen with his next, inexpensive model).

But I’m equally intrigued by his ideas of putting, in essence, a large electrical storage battery in a person’s home and the above idea, creating solar panels that are essentially your home’s new roof.

Again, because I’m in sunny Florida, I’d jump at the chance to have a solar roof.  Given the amount of money I spent last month cooling this place down, I’d be most welcome to the idea of using the blistering sun to -ironically- cool me down.