Solar Panels & a 6-year-old

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:41:00 GMT

On the way to drop-off my 6-year-old son to school today he had a sudden curiosity for solar panels. He asked out of the blue where were the solar panels as we traveled down the familiar highway. I knew we were coming up on some of the small panels, but as we started to look we were amazed just how frequently we came across the 4- and 5-panel units, probably every half mile or so down the road. Of course my first thought was, "YES!"--my encouraging words of science were actually working (he's listening) and opening his mind to a new world. Then we used this as a learning opportunity to talk about how solar electricity works, and discussed how limitless it will be when we figure how to harness more of the sun's energy for everyday life. Next we were talking about hydrogen fuel cells and the awesome potential of green power.

I have to say how impressed I am to see the major strides we as a society have been taking to harness and use clean energy. On the one hand one could argue it's about time. Not to show my age, but I can easily remember when my dad helped work with me to build our first solar water heater for our pool when I was 12 years old--in 1980. It wasn't long after that when I remember gas prices first went over $1.00 per gallon and how shocked the world was. Now, nearly 30 years later, we're still (at least in America) nearly completely depending on oil for our transportation needs. It's nice to finally see us moving in this direction.

Sometimes I do wonder what the world will really be like when we implement 100% renewable energy for the masses. I think unfortunately the impact is what is holding us up, otherwise I believe we'd be there already. What would seriously happen if houses were built to harness solar, wind and water power? And what if automobiles ran using fuel cells--powered by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe? No shortage there. Already the prices for converting your house or business to solar and wind energy are astounding. But no more electric companies? Converting all gas stations to hydrogen pumps? Or what if we simply discover how to maximize solar electricity enough to plug in our cars of the future to recharge using our own energy? No more gas stations...

It seems to me that there are alot of people and companies that stand to lose as we make the logical step of converting the human race to green power. Fortunately that's not the immediate future but unfortunately it could impact the speed at which we adopt clean energies. However, even in light of that, I am impressed that we are finally embracing the green power effort and felt great pride in showing my son how far we've come on our drive to school.

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Solar Panels & a 6-year-old