The other day I blogged about an idea for creating farms of Stirling engines to generate power in the desert, and financing them through individual investments in each engine. Predictably, I got a lot of comments that fell into one of these categories.
1. It will never work.
2. Someone is already doing it.
Here’s the best example of someone doing something like it, which I am copying from a comment from Prashanth J.
—- Begin comment —-
Scott,
Well presented but this is exactly what Suzlon, the wind energy firm in India does. This firm operates in Europe and U.S. as well.
This is how it works:
1. The company sets up the wind turbines in places where there is plenty of wind blowing to generate electricity and have them connected to state electricity grids.
2. Individual investors can buy a wind turbine which costs about 200 thousand dollars.
3. Banks finance the investor to buy the turbine.
4. Since the Indian government has a rule that at least 10% of the state electricity consumption has to come from renewable energy resources, state electricity boards buy electricity from Suzlon.
5. The returns which come from this turbine electricity generation is almost 30-40% more than the bank installment the investor has to pay. So the investor starts to make profit from the very first month.
6. The Suzlon owner, Tulsi Tanti, has made a huge fortune in around 10 years. He is one of the richest men in world according to Forbes.
http://www.forbes-global.com/lists/2006/10/QD9Q.html [no longer available]
It’s a win-win situation for all and earth.
I am with you. We have a proven idea.
—- End of comment —-
Now all we need is a desert where it gets windy at night, so we can put a windmill on top of a stirling engine and share infrastructure.
This sort of economic model, plus the story about the guy who discovered a way to burn seawater for energy, makes me think our worries about energy are overblown.
Here’s the link for the seawater guy. It’s amazing.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iT1KAi6UEPN8LqZlvLnfsxP7ToKw [no longer available]
Update: The two criticisms I am hearing in the comments to this post are:
1. Windmills and Stirling engines aren’t the big answer because you’d need to store their energy for the times when they don’t produce.
2. Burning seawater by exposing it to radio waves is nothing but a potentially more efficient way to use electricity to create hydrogen.
Hydrogen can be stored. Problem in #1 is solved.
While I share the skepticism that burning seawater can produce more energy than it takes to create the radio waves, the comparison should be to coal or oil, not a perpetual motion machine. It takes a lot of energy to drill for oil, transport it, and refine it into gasoline. Same with turning coal into liquid fuel. But those aren’t perpetual motion inventions.
Is my comparison wrong?