Intro

I'm starting this blog under the premise that the energy infrastructure we are currently committed to will no longer remain viable in the future. We are obviously fossil fuel dependent and our continued reliance on these forms will continue to flare geopolitical instability, marked economic dispartities (due to the highly centralized nature of fossil energies), and of course environmental problems. Perhaps though greater than any of these individual problems is the overall emergence of an increasingly brittle energy infrastructure. One only needs to look at how vulnerable both electric grids, and oil pipelines have proven to be in countries of instability to realize this point. Though in the US we probably needn't worry about these direct attacks (yet) we do need to worry about the indirect results. In a world of tight energy interdependence these problems will affect us all.

I hope to initiate a pragmatic discussion of what realistic sorts of possibilities we can develop. I'll be sharing some general approaches and ideas I've come up with you in hopes that through the power of networks we can perhaps create a couple of useful emergent ideas.

First though let me share my philosophy and approach to the problem. Since highly centralized energy infrastructures seem vulnerable to both breakdowns and economic control and that renewable energy is by very nature distributed I am biased towards localized renewable energy systems.  Given that neither small wind or PV systems seem to have proven succesful in this arena I am trying to really think outside the box.  My constraints are:

1. Needs to be able to reproduce locally, therefore readily available and abundant materials must be used in construction.

2. Cost per kwHr produced (not cost/kW installed) is most important economic metric.

3. Should not rely on other potentially unstable centralized technologies.

4.  Construction must be accomplished through readily available means (cnc mills, lathes ect).

Those constraints are not final of course, but do set the stage for explaining some of the energy system ideas that follow.  So that being said lets brainstorm a little on low cost solar thermal systems.