The Other Kind of Solar Power ????

That got my attention.  What other kind of solar power is there?  We have been so inundated with advertising about photo voltaic power little attention has been given to solar thermal. Recently someone brought this application to my attention.

Go here   http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/07/solar-powered-factories.html#more

For a very informative article

Europe is much further along in development of solar thermal applications. Imbedded in the above mentioned article are links to a You-Tube video showing how solar concentrators can even melt steel in a few seconds.

On a more mundane scale low heat installations can be used effectively to heat water cook food and heat houses. Cost of installations are lower  than PV and  in terms of energy  it is three time as effective in extracting energy from sunlight compared to PV.

Because I live in high latitudes where we have long dark winters I was extremely skeptical about solar cookers. Then I remembered an old time gadget called the hay box cooker.  You heat up the food in a pot; then when it is up to temp you place the cook pot or Dutch oven in an insulated (hay) box to let the residual heat finish the cooking.  Some limitations apply. This works better for slow simmer dishes. A seared steak on the BBQ is not going to work nor will stir fry. But steamed rice, potatoes, stews would work.

So you use solar heat during the day to generate the heat and let it simmer in an insulated box to finish. To store addition heat you could also heat up ceramic bricks with solar then place them alongside the Dutch oven pot inside the insulated box.

Passive solar homes have been promoted by architects for several decades. Various methods have been promoted to store heat for release overnight. This is another form of solar thermal just by another name. Some of these methods even lend themselves to retrofits on existing buildings not just new purpose built designs.

For some reason we have come to expect one solution fits all. This is not realistic.  But if we can achieve something that displaces an expensive energy source for 50% of the time we have still reduced our annual expense.

The oil industry is even using solar power to recover more oil by heating water to steam and injecting the steam into the almost spent oil pool. More oil can be recovered this way.

Because solar thermal is less known here we have a steeper learning curve head of us.

Low Tech of Yesteryear

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I found a website containing a large number of articles dealing with historical technology going back almost 2000 years.  Yes 2000 years! It’s not a typo.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/12/trolley-canal-boats.html

What is really fascinating is how some technology was eclipsed by other trends and then abandoned.  What is really amazing are the findings of experts that in some cases this technology was more efficient than modern petroleum fuel replacements.

Kind of begs the question as to why did we go with oil?

Hopefully some people will read the articles and will attempt to adopt some of what they read. For off grid in particular I believe   this would be advantageous.

Long before we had steam or electric power   medieval engineers built human powered cranes capable of lifting several tons of loads. Sounds handy for anyone attempting to build their own home from scratch without help from electric or diesel powered cranes.

There is even an article on how not to use alternative energy.

This leads into several articles dealing with pedal powered device.  One of the first lessons it gives is that electrical generation is perhaps the least efficient way to get a job done. The articles illustrate various pedal powered machines including a farm harvesting device   that does a tremendous amount of work just using human muscles.

While some of these may not have a tremendous level of interest in North American the apple harvesting and cider making operation sure caught my eye. I used to live in a region where a lot of apple cider was made. One place I rented had a large number of apple trees so something like that would have been of great interest at the time.

I have in recent times been asked for quotes for solar panels to power wood working shops.  Given they are all one man hobby shops pedal power might make more sense both financially and ecologically.

Even the index is too large to list so go there and see for yourself.

   http://www.lowtechmagazine.com