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Green Collar Careers Renewable Technology

Renewable energy is to the 21st century what technology was to the decade of the 90's.   America is just beginning to usher in an exciting new era of technology with renewable energy that will persist through the century.

For tens of thousands of years, man only knew of fire as a way to harness energy.  In the 1940's man harnessed the atom, however that hasn't proved to be the most cost effective alternative to combustion.  As we entered the new millennium the side effects of centuries of consuming fossil fuels has begun to leverage a migration to renewable fuels.  As you can imagine such a migration takes an enormous effort of both technological and cultural action.

Demand for electricity will continue to grow and at a rising rate.  New homes, new buildings.  Appliances that Americans take for granted are fast finding their way into the homes of billions of people;  China, India, South America, and Africa.

Transportation consumes far more energy then all the electricity currently generated.  With the demand for petroleum rising and the supply reaching peak capacity we are on the edge of a rapid rise for electric vehicles that no doubt will plug into the same grid that powers our air conditioners.

Federal mandates are in development to stimulate the growth of renewable technologies by taxing fossil fuel emissions.  Considering the rise in demand and the forthcoming carbon taxes its a safe bet that the cost of utility generated power is going to rise substantially and likely over the next decade.  Speaking of carbon taxes, much of the revenue will be returned to supplement the cost of renewable fuel technology and installation.

For example, the wind turbines that dot the landscape through parts of Texas and California not only sell electricity;  they sell carbon credits too.  While it costs more to generate a kWh of power from a wind turbine then it costs from coal, the carbon offset brings the two systems much closer together.

Solar Photo Voltaic (PV) electricity has been an option although until recently it was just plain too expensive.  Technical developments have reduced the cost from $20 per Watt a decade ago to about $10 per Watt today with some very promising technical breakthroughs coming.  To be competitive with coal, Solar PV needs to be in the $2 per Watt range.

One of the promising Solar PV technologies are Thin Film which use a transparent thin layer of rare metals coating a sheet of glass or even plastic.  These metals are photo-reactive to generate electricity and have already broken the $3 per Watt barrier.  Moreover, some thin film PV materials are being applied to plastics that can be applied to windows (the ultimate solar film) and being flexible can conform to uneven shapes.

Through the 1980's there was an interest among Americans to adapt to leveraging solar energy with architecture and solar water heating.  Tax incentives spawned growth in the technology however constructing a cost effective system was elusive.  After the tax incentives expired sales and development of solar hot water systems declined.  Solar architecture also declined as the structure typically needed a south facing wall that would fit on some of the smaller sized properties.

Wind Turbines have seen some rapid development over the last decade with some impressive developments for a mechanical system.  Being a mechanical system many of the traditional reliability and noise problems have been solved although the generation predictability still poses a greater risk then many are willing to risk.

Renewable energy is already the up and coming supply for the 21st century.  The Renewable Technology module will provide a technical understanding of the various systems and their components.  One of the most important components is the inverter.  Inverters take the raw "unconditioned" power from the generation system and convert that to be fully compatible with commercial AC power.  Her again, technology has lowered the significantly cost of these subsystems while increasing reliability over the last decade.