Saturday, April 25, 2009
Power or Source?
Most of the modern technology we have today solely relies on a supply of electricity. Computers, phones, refrigerators, etc would all be impossible without electricity. If technology is defined as an end to a means, we previously had to have a source of power present to achieve those means. To help us get from one place to another we had to have a horse present. To listen to music we needed people to be in front of us singing. To talk to someone we needed to physically go to that person. With the discovery and realization of the potential of electricity, that source of power has been removed from us. We store electricity in containers as batteries, we generate it in our cars and run it through our houses. The electricity is present but the source of power, the actual production of electricity has been removed. Electric plants sit on the outskirts of towns generating electricity from water, wind, atoms being split, etc. In the case of cars, we do take the source of power with us, the internal combustion engine, but the electricity does not make the car run. The car is run by gasoline and the electricity produced is only a side product. In the case of electric cars, the car needs to be either plugged in to charge its battery or receive new prefilled batteries to keep running. In other words, it already needs to have the electricity ready to keep running. The source of power is once again removed. To make a certain technology achieve an "end to a mean" by using electricity, the source of power has to be removed from the technology. This can create a lot of problems as when there is no apparent source of something, the source becomes insignificant. People leave lights on when they leave the house, never turn off the TV and need a constant supply of electricity to power their cell phone. Power without the source becomes unlimited power. With such a high demand for electricity, more and more power plants are going to be needed. Coal dependant plants will release more co2 into the atmosphere and nuclear reactors will produce more waste. Even with the use of "green" technology such as wind turbines and solar panels there will be an eventual downside as long as there is no limit on power. If the whole landscape is covered with wind turbines, does that make the said landscape a "natural" and green place? Without the connection of the power and source, the source will continue to be used in the most limitless way hurting the environment in one way or another.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is very interesting. I think you make a good point that we need to become informed of how much power we actually use on a day to day basis. I agree that we should try to conserve or at least reduce our power consumption because, like you said, we don’t want wind turbines and solar panels covering the entirety of the earth. This being said though, I think that one of the premises of green technology, especially green power plants, would be to make more energy, more efficiently. The idea would be to have a new power plant that can make more energy than an older one, thus making it obsolete. This would concentrate energy production to smaller areas. Not that this is necessarily a good thing, it just seems to me that it would be a sound idea for power plant designers.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I’m stuck at is how we would remove this separation from power generation. Obviously, we can’t all just go about making electricity, as this would halt all forms of human productivity (1). I think that in our advanced age of technology, we (as a modern society) are now unavoidably dependent on electricity. I would wager that most people would not want to live without electricity (I know I share this sentiment), so I think that education about electricity production and consumption and how to reduce it is one of the only ways we can reduce our separation from power generation.
1. A particular image comes to mind of a person making electricity on one of those bike generators (I saw them do this at the museum of science in Boston), but this does not produce anywhere enough electricity that would be needed to power an entire house. Furthermore, the electricity would only last when you are on the bike, so if you need to go do anything (cook, bathroom, get tired, etc.) you would have no electricity to help you. However, a good side effect of this plan would be that the number of obese individuals in the world would drop considerably!
It's funny that the most cost effective solution to our energy problems is not to make more power plants but to be more efficient. I feel that this is something people are not as focused on. When people talk about being green, they think solar and wind, not more insulation or properly sealing your home. People ask me all the time what they should do to their house, or, I love this one, "I was thinking of putting solar panels on my house, how much is this going to cost." While they are making the effort, they are not realizing that they should seal up all the cracks in their home first, this is the most important thing. Next is having proper insulation. People think about solar, wind, etc. before these two simple things. In many cars, a great deal of energy is lost between the engine and the wheels. Hmm, why not put an engine at each wheel. This is not so effective for an engine, but for a motor, this starts to make a lot of sense. I don't know why this is not seen much yet. People talk about having cars, equivalent to 200 mpg and the technology is available and not super expensive.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, energy efficiency is more important than any of our other problems right now in technology, such as homes, cars, and power production.