Applause for Arnold Schwarzenegger
I saw a story on "Sixty Minutes" concerning how Arnold Schwarzenegger is turning California into a more environment friendly state. He wants to use more solar energy in the Mojave desert. He likes the use of the wind farms to generate electricity. He wants tighter emissions standards on cars. He drives a Hummer running on vegetable oil. Florida and Alaska could use this example to improve their states. At least he has two more years to make improvements to the state. I hope he does well.
posted by seaside @ 7:39 PM
1 Comments:
At 3:23 PM,
Lew said…
California always has been on the leading edge of environmental protection. And as far as using the solar energy in the Mojave desert, they just haven’t been able to make solar energy cost effective as compared to conventional power production. Plus they have never come up with a really good idea as to what to do when night comes and no more sunshine or solar energy. The closest thing that I have seen as a solution was in Phoenix, Arizona. At night when there was a surplus of unused electricity when the stores closed and people went to be and turned off their lights and televisions. The electric company decided to store this extra nighttime power for use during the day during the peak power demand times. On the south side of Phoenix there is a mountain called South mountain (naturally). On the side of this mountain was a small valley called hidden valley. It was nice to hike back along the narrow dirt path to this valley because in a desert setting it was lush and green because it trapped rainwater in the valley. The electric company decided to install huge electric pumps at the base of the mountain and pump water up a large pipe to the valley and fill it with water. This would be done at night and the surplus electricity would be used to power the pumps. During the day when more electricity was needed, they would let the water run down the pipe and spin the electric generating turbines at the base of the mountain to produce electricity. There have been similar concepts such as drilling down to an underground cavity and using the electricity from solar power to pump compressed air down into these cavities and using the compressed air to power electric turbines at night. There has just been so many good ideas proposed but they just can’t compete economically with coal or oil. Is this Arnold’s last term as governor? How many terms can they serve as governor of California? Well, so much for a course in energy 101. Have a nice day and have fun playing with the dogs. Lew
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