Rick Nelson

Solar-powered system hung out to dry
September 27, 2007

With energy costs rising and climate change threatening, it seems prudent to cut energy use whenever feasible.

One way to do that, reports EDN technical editor Margery Conner, is to replace the ac-induction motors in consumer appliances with more efficient permanent-magnet motors.

Of course, even more efficiency could be gained by replacing an appliance such as a dryer, for example, with something that someone gaming the patent office might call an “external passive linear solar-energy acquisition system.”

But as is the case in so many efforts to site energy facilities, NIMBI (or, in this case, literally, NIHBY, for "not in her backyard) seems to prevail in the deployment of external passive linear energy acquisition systems. From a recent Wall Street Journal report: “Susan Taylor…strung a clothesline to a tree in her backyard, pinned up some freshly washed flannel sheets—and, with that, became a renegade. The regulations of the subdivision in which Ms. Taylor lives effectively prohibit outdoor clotheslines. In a move that has torn apart this otherwise tranquil community, the development's managers have threatened legal action.”

As letter-writer Doug Landfear of  Oakland, Calif., put it in yesterday’s WSJ, “The right to receive energy from the sun is about as fundamental as it gets…We should applaud those who dry their clothes in the sun; they help to make the world better for all of us, one shirt at a time.”

Ms. Taylor’s neighbors are a bunch of wet blankets.

Posted by Rick Nelson on September 27, 2007 | Comments (2)