In less than 48 hrs from now, Great Britain could well be celebrating it’s longest ‘coal-free’ run since 1882! Nearly 140 yrs of running a country on dirty, filthy, pollution spewing coal.
Remarkably, it was around this time, (1884) that a farmer in Arizona first stumbled across selenium and made the first photo voltaic cell to make electricity from sunlight to run his water pumps when the wind didn’t blow.
So we now had two major proven technologies to power the World. Sunlight or coal.
The World chose coal.
It wasn’t until the 1950’s that NASA introduced the use of silicon rather than selenium that had been the primary PV material in solar cells, to power their satellites.
Those first PV calls were not as efficient as today standards. And we can generate a lot more power in a smaller area due to advancements in technology and development today than we could way back then.
In fact, it is possible to run whole factories, where they have £20,000-£30,000 a yr electricity bills and take them virtually grid free for 4-5 months of the year (other than the really crappy dark days where we get torrential rain)
On houses, where have a million solar homes already, we now know it’s possible to run a 4 bed family home for 5 people, charge an electric car daily, and between April – Oct spend less than £100 on energy from the grid as everything is supplied by the Sun. Some clients have gone several weeks without taken a penny’s worth of dirty grid energy, all because they chose solar.
Yes, all from the Sun. Even on this cloudy windswept rock in the North Atlantic we call home. If the grass grows where you are, then solar will work for you!
In recent weeks, solar energy alone has provided over 25% of our countries needs. With wind, over 50% some days at times. Yesterday, Solar gave us close to 30% at peak! We are not even in May yet!
Yes, i know not all the factories are operational and many shops are shut and who knows what will come from all from all this once a level of normality has resumed?
Considering we had next to no clean energy on our National Grid 10 years ago and today we will have all but killed coal, and as i sit here, looking out on clear blue skies, with next to no traffic and only the sound of birdsong, maybe this is the new normal.
A new normal where we work from home, where we can. A new normal where we breath clean air due to fewer unnecessary car and aeroplane journey’s. A new normal where we only shopped for what we needed and not what we wanted, just because we can. A new normal where people and our welfare take precedent of over profit and greed.
A new normal where more meaningful employment will be created rather than the disposable jobs that go with the throw-a-way society we allowed them to create for us.
Imagine NOT doing the daily commute. How much would that save?
In time?
in money?
in health?
Covid-19 has totally re-set the World that’s for sure and whilst we mourn our losses, we should also celebrate their lives as their sacrifice has made the whole world wake up to what what’s important.
If anything can unify us after all this, it is the power of human nature and spirit.
After all, we’re all brothers and sisters under the same sun.
Kevin
