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Solar Power on the Open Sea

• by Tara Holmes
• May 4, 2012

What does the future of renewable energy look like? Typically, when people think about renewable energy, they visualize miles of solar panels in a desert, large offshore wind farms, or residential solar panel projects, but what about powering on-demand transportation, such as an airplane, car or boat?

Solar-powered cars are nothing new to the R&D world, what typically holds the technology back in cost and infrastructure – as well as demand. Planes, an ideal candidate for solar power, carry such an expensive (and heavily regulated) burden that any progressive renewable energy retrofit in that sector, particularly on a massive scale, is quite a ways off.

In the case of ocean travel, however, renewable energy could look something like the Turanor PlanetSolar Solar Boat, which recently completed an 18-month journey across the world using only the power of the sun. Embarking from Monaco in September 2010, the Swiss-designed boat cost $26 million and comes complete with 537 square meters of solar panels that powered its voyage from Monaco to destination spots such as Miami, Cancún, Brisbane, Singapore, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi.

Raphael Domjan, the visionary of the boat, aims to get a message across to the public that it is indeed possible to travel the world without the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, a major externality to the entire planet given the mitigation and adaptation cost of climate change, are no longer a viable long-term energy option, although many fossil fuel companies would argue otherwise.

It doesn’t help that most of the world’s entire infrastructure is linked to fossil fuels, making it extremely laborious and costly to alter our existing way of life. Projects like the Keystone XL pipeline and the Alberta Tar Sands only exemplify the lengths companies will go to for a world addicted to a finite fuel source. It’s clearly time for sweeping, progressive change and a new energy market.

While the Turanor is obviously not for everyone’s budget, projects like this introduce a breath of fresh air to business as usual. The mere fact that the ship ran solely on solar power and successfully made a trip across the world demonstrates not only the technical might of renewable energy, but the potential the industry has to compete with the standard fossil fuel-powered fleets that have existed historically. The next step is to bring this conclusion to the rest of the market, reduce the price and make clean, renewable and sustainable energy the energy of today and of the future.

Cross-posted from the San Francisco Energy Cooperative.

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Read more: energy, fossil fuels, renewable energy, ship, solar power, travel, turanor

Photo Credit: Pierre Bona

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/solar-power-on-the-open-sea.html#ixzz1u5B0EQbB

This is great technology.

I myself have solar panels to save on electricity costs.

The big problem is often the carbon footprint though.

I wonder how the solar energy was saved for overcast and stormy days?

Why?

A few years ago I got involved in selling Water Butts (Rainwater barrels) in a UK drought period and offered a fitting service. I promised my customers that I would source the most eco-friendly products that I could find. To my dismay I discovered that to sell European and British made horribly non-eco barrels was better move than to buy Chinese made Eco-friendly produced barrels. Why?

Because to drag a shipfull of Eco-Barrels half way across the globe was almost twice the carbon footprint. We need to bear this in mind when we buy so called Eco-friendly products.

In terms of nuclear debris in future I'm very impressed that Japan has taken this step.

I hope that this is the right move long-term and that they will move to sustainable energy.

Sitting as they do on a thermal fault it would be good if they could use thermal energy.

I'm confident that this move is indeed a good one for the planet.

Roger

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In terms of nuclear debris in future I'm very impressed that Japan has taken this step.

I hope that this is the right move long-term and that they will move to sustainable energy.

Sitting as they do on a thermal fault it would be good if they could use thermal energy.

I'm confident that this move is indeed a good one for the planet.

Roger

March 15, 2012, MSNBC

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/15/10704801-video-from-chile-stirs-up-ufo-buzz

A compilation of 17-month-old video clips from a Chilean military air show is stirring up predictable responses from both sides of the UFO debate.

"This is a very, very unusual case, and I'm hoping that this case will help move forward the recognition that there really is something here that's worthy of further study. ... It has the possibility of being a breakthrough case," said investigative journalist Leslie Kean, the author of the book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record.

The case goes back to an air show that was staged in November 2010, at Chile's Air Force academy, which is headquartered at the El Bosque Air Force Base in Santiago. Kean said an engineer at the nearby aircraft factory noticed an anomalous spot as he was sifting through video taken from the show. The spot appeared to move quickly from frame to frame, and the engineer thought it looked enough like some sort of craft to notify the Chilean government agency in charge of investigating anomalous aerial phenomena, [CEFAA].

The way Kean tells it, CEFAA investigators ... pieced together six additional views of the spot-shaped phenomena. CEFAA's conclusion was that the spots were caused by an object traveling through the scene at speeds in excess of 4,000 mph — so fast that it went unnoticed by air-show spectators. "Humans inside this object could not survive," Kean and a co-author, former New York Times investigative reporter Ralph Blumenthal, wrote in a Huffington Post report. "And, somehow, it made no sonic boom..."