Ode to the Humble Solar Panel

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Every so often I like to browse the free energy videos on Youtube. There's such a dizzying variety of charlatans on display there, shilling their own take on the classic investment scheme, the perpetual motion machine. Free energy magnetic motors, vortex toruses, orgonic concentrators and all manner of similar baboozery.

It speaks to the longstanding human fantasy of abundant, freely available energy. Harvesting ambient natural forces, free of charge, and putting them to work towards our own ends. But why do people lose themselves in these dead ends, fraudulent technologies that never worked...when the real McCoy already exists and is in wide use?

What is a solar panel anyway, but a free energy machine? Paired with a sufficient battery bank, it's a perpetual source of power that can operate anywhere on Earth....or even off it. Have you ever reflected on what a miracle it is that physics allows such a marvel of technology to exist? Something like an antennae for capturing energy beamed down to us by the sun?

It didn't have to be that way. I feel the same way about nuclear power and may yet write a similar article on that topic, simply celebrating what great luck it is that it's somehow possible to refine specific metals into a form that remains hot enough to drive a steam turbine for multiple decades.

Back to solar though. There's a beautiful purity to it. Some of my favorite electric vehicle hobby projects don't even use batteries. They're electric boats which have enough surface area that, when covered in solar panels, generates enough power to drive the motors directly.

That means they can run uninterrupted between sunup and sundown without missing a beat. Then do it all again the next day without needing to be plugged into anything. There's a man named Jamie Mantzel living with his family off grid in Panama who powers all of his boats from huge built in solar arrays and never needs fuel, or even batteries for that matter.

It's the simplicity of it that intoxicates me. A device which catches sunlight, and turns it into work. If it didn't already exist, that description of it would make it sound like impossible magic. I mean really it's just a type of semiconductor, like LEDs, but that doesn't capture the conceptual wonder of it.

I've written about solar powered electric cars before, right here. I've written about solar power towers, technically not related to photovoltaics but still an application of solar energy which fascinates me.

I can't seem to dig it up, but I've written about solar boats, solar blimps and all manner of other primarily solar powered vehicles because it's just one of those every day wonders people pass by without even blinking. Like how they ride on airplanes and aren't amazed by the wonder of flight.

I'm always excited to fly, because it never stops being amazing to me. Likewise I never stopped being amazed that it's actually possible to turn sunlight into electricity. Using a device that can be portable, and not even that costly to boot! I wrote about portable solar gadgets here.

From the standpoint of a techno-purist, the most perfect source of motive force is the electric motor. 90+% efficient, silent, a single moving part. Don't get me started on electric motors! But the most conceptually pure and perfect energy supplier is photovoltaic panels. The marriage of cars driven by electric motors, powered by batteries and charged with solar panels is then understandably one of the most beautiful things I know about.

There are of course many other options for renewable energy, some of them currently better. But if solar panels and batteries improve enough, they will get to the point where there isn't any point to using anything else. Every home will have solar panels on the roof and a massive battery in the basement as a matter of course.

That's what I call free energy for the masses. Decentralized, democratized, and the realization of a dream as old as flight.

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^{Stay Cozy!}