It’s always a mixed blessing when the clouds roll in. If it rains, that’s wonderful. If it’s cloudy, that’s terrible. The sun just can’t poke its way through clouds. Today we got 0.7 kilowatt hours by 3 in the afternoon from the sun (we are solar powered, in case you didn’t know). So our backup generator turned on to get us through the darkness.When we come home from being away, all we have to do is look down from the road at the pad where the generator sits. If some of the bricks are light-colored, the generator has been on. Its cooling air dries the bricks. What a waste! Who needs dry bricks?
Generators like this are at best less than 30% efficient; the bulk of the energy is thrown away as heat. There are some new materials that can capture energy from this so-called low-grade heat. But of course they’re not yet available. It reminds me of the promise of electric power from nuclear fusion, which has been pursued for several decades at the cost of billions of dollars. It goes like this: Nuclear Fusion—The Power of the Future! So far it looks like it always will be.
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