ggunn
PE (Electrical), NABCEP certified
- Location
- Austin, TX, USA
- Occupation
- Consulting Electrical Engineer - Photovoltaic Systems
I'm not proposing anything..... Believe me, if I had the answer I'd be rich and you all would be paying me to install my designs. :blink:
Some good points being made. Certainly the multiple different DC voltages are an issue, so maybe standardization is the first step. Forget IEEE, maybe a new organization called FTFAM - Forward Thinkers For Advancement of Mankind
I agree, many of the "crack-pots" were just forward thinkers, the man is always going to try and keep you down by labeling those that are different as weirdo's.
Ideas expressed today may be obsolete by the time the are uttered, but does that mean we keep quiet and march in line lockstep (Read George Orwell 1984) or do those brave enough question why, and push for change.
Seems as a society we are always thinking of ways to "improve" what we already have. When do you say, this just ain't working anymore, throw it out, and start fresh. OK maybe PV isn't the answer, maybe wind isn't the answer, maybe batteries for storage don't make sense. I'll tell you though fracking to get natural gas ain't the answer either.
We need jobs, we need infrastructure, and we need a new direction. The same ol', same ol' isn't working anymore.
To say that there is a problem is the easy part. Deciding what to do about it is orders of magnitude harder.
A major obstacle to any proposal of sweeping change is always what has gone before. The establishment of a universal DC voltage isn't going to happen; any voltage you pick will make obsolete everything that uses a different voltage, which would be most of it. My guitar amps use 500VDC, can we make that the standard? Heck, many things that convert AC to DC for internal power produce several different voltages.
Neither PV, wind, nor grid storage is THE answer to our electrical power needs because there is no single answer, but AC transmission is here to stay.