This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Close to forty years ago a group of engineers were building solar powered steam electrical generators on Second Ave near Main. That’s right, in Longmont, not Boulder or anywhere else. President Jimmy Carter had pushed for tax credits for alternative energy companies. People were on a roll to new and old energy ideas. Our group had found an idea patented in the 1930s for producing low pressure steam with solar collectors for use as a still. The actual use may have been in the arctic, where harvesting sunlight could be lifesaving. As Colorado engineers, we upped the ante to impulse flash steam in a high pressure system driving a turbine alternator. Producing serious power, up to about four kilowatts. It worked and we started to build an array for 30Kw. We were hardly alone in our work, as many others here and across the nation had their own independent ideas about how to generate power with wind and solar.
When Ronald Reagan entered the white house, his Secretary of the Interior James Watt got up on the roof to kick apart the Jimmy Carter solar collectors. This framed the attitude towards alternative energy for the next decade and more. Any competition to oil and gas would be poorly received by the federal government. Alternative energy ideas were not receiving support, and were often under regulatory assault. Boulder County found fault with wind generators, but our solar collectors where not interfering with the view.
Roof top hot water solar installations were dismantled as they are difficult to maintain, and energy credits nearly impossible to obtain. While federal law required Public Service of Colorado to install a reversible meter so we could show benefit and receive energy credits as a producer, PSC intentionally failed to comply for two years. Boulder County and local towns have developed regulations for power collectors on private land. A rooftop solar collector may be permitted with a contractor, but don’t count on getting one for a wind generator. Private energy production is now more regulated than it was forty years ago.
While we are screwing around in the US battling federal and local governments, the Israelis used our technologies to produce power in a desalinization plant on the Gulf of Aqaba. When it comes to stealing technology for public benefit, no one beats Israel.
Oddly enough, the Longmont group working on solar steam all had day jobs in the thin film industry that produced advances in micro-electronics and solar photovoltaic (PV) cells. Solid state solar power collection is what we all now refer to a solar power. There’s rare and hard to find stuff in PV. PV is made with petrochemical byproducts. It’s not easy to make PV, and it doesn’t produce alternating current (AC) and needs to be converted to travel any distance or be used by the majority of electrical aides we use daily. Conversions are inefficient. Why not just produce AC power from the sun?
It’s not that hard, and you don’t need rare materials. If our materials in 1982 couldn’t be found in a junkyard or the hardware store, there were equipment catalogs at the library. Before the internet, things took much longer, and cost more too. Over the past few summers a group of hobbyists have worked on a steam solar project at TinkerMill. The experiments began with producing a kilowatt of energy with different styles of reflectors aiming at a central point. The web has shown hacker modifications to turn gas engines into steam engines. The local model is a lawnmower engine driven by steam turning an alternator. So far this research activity has gone unregulated, but may soon require a permit.
We are encouraged to rely on products made for us by subsidized industries. Regulatory agencies operate politically and illogically. Policies now in vogue could be abhorrent to future political agendas.
True energy independence may not involve the government or Big Oil at all. It requires that we start by thinking independently and take action.
