Solar, a technology for energy indepence

Solar, a technology for energy indepence

2 min.

Solar, a technology for energy indepence

Michael Peck has been Mondragon´s North America delegate since 2000.[/caption] By Michael Peck. Last month, the Obama Administration announced the domestic U.S. roll-out of the “Industrial Commons” strategy through the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) initiative to leverage the power of regional manufacturing clusters designed to invigorate American manufacturing, innovation and exports. In this context, solar as an enabling technology offers much for the future of the automotive and construction sectors.

Significantly, the U.S. Congress has authorized more than 136 billion dollars for disaster mitigation during the 2011-2013 timeframe and most recently more than sixty billion dollars to date to fund post-Hurricane Sandy renovation in the new, alarming “weather security” marketplace. Already, the U.S. Defense Department is testing “a fleet of plug-in electric trucks, buses and related infrastructure that will facilitate intra-communications with the power grid” to optimize “the vehicles' batteries as storage, moving power back and forth between parked vehicles and power lines” (Annie Snider, “E&E Daily”, Tuesday, February 5, 2013) to respond to weather security challenges. Plug & Play Vehicle to grid technology represents the new “game-changer” in how the U.S. will consume, deploy, and build plug-in electric and hybrid combustion automobiles first as mandatory, distributed, back-up power systems that also happen to provide carbon-free transport options. In the rapidly evolving and growing weather security marketplace, U.S. coastal homes and communities will feature a bi-directional sub panel and a jack in each exposed house and industrial building as an expanded, mandatory and precautionary use of the U.S. Department of Energy’s “Plug & Play” technology project. Ongoing experiments with two-way chargers will allow consumers both to power their cars and also send power back to their electric company.  Car windshields will become capable of both absorbing and retransmitting power while new automotive “skins” will mirror solar thin film properties that augment expanded battery capacity. Energy independence Electric vehicle consumer marketing will reposition from mere carbon neutral transportation to climate change solutions sets operating as mobile, back-up power systems for post natural disaster coastal neighborhoods.  With some policy imagination, enhanced net metering options (selling power back to utilities) from distributed renewable generation plants either on rooftops or windshields could also pay for home mortgages, school loans, and retraining for the unemployed. This development will facilitate both retail and industrial domestic energy independence, counter the ravages of coastal climate change, and engender serious national deficit reduction as a natural byproduct through locally produced clean energy, locally manufactured products for export, and locally licensed innovation.


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