Energy Solution Quotes
Of great surprise to most people, there were actual working solar powered engines invented in the latter part of the 19th century. In this famous demonstration, Pifre printed with a large rotary printing press 500 copies of a new magazine. The printing press was powered by a 2 horsepower steam engine which in turn was driven by the solar heat from a parabolic “dish” which focused the sun’s rays on a 50 gallon boiler. Despite a cloudy day, the solar engine took only 50 minutes to heat to a boil and then printed all afternoon. Much of the most effective uses of Solar power uses the concentrated heat of the sun to heat water or some other substance like this device. The vast majority of the hot water heaters in Israel function on this principle—no electricity or any other fossil fuel. John Ericsson of America also developed workable solar engines {635005}. Coal was the fuel that powered steam engines and would do so for electrical generators until oil was discovered. The coal, oil and gas was less expensive however but there were areas that did not have fuel and before oil and gas were discovered, these men thought that at some point the coal would run out. The only reason that the solar engines of the time were more costly where fuel was available is that no one realized the huge environmental consequence of the fossil fuels. Today we do realize that but do not charge the oil and gas companies and consumers to cover the costs of fixing what we know about and are able to remedy. Solar powered equipment is not a modern invention however and has been with us for well over a century.
Lott, like many other reasonably intelligent people who understood little about technology, did not realize that all the early efforts with a technology are relatively primitive and even the best ideas have to be engineered to scale and cost efficiency. A decade later, solar energy had become a significant industry in the work and the United States, which had invented many of the early technologies had lost the international lead in Solar Energy to Germany and China. The ultimate value of any technology cannot be judged by the initial technological efforts.
