My son once asked me if they had cars when I was a boy.

I think my granddaughter Maya and her secretly named sister, will not drive a car and probably never own a car. 

My granddaughter’s children will probably ask if they had cars when they were little girls. 

The Economist

Electric cars The death of the internal combustion engine 

It had a good run. But the end is in sight for the machine that changed the world

A Tesla sedan can beat almost any internal combustion car on the road. It was never designed as a race car. Auto racing rules are being re-designed to use electric propulsion and regenerative energy. The challenge is making the cars controllable by human drivers. 

Will people want to be fans of robotically controlled racing cars?

All electric robotic trucks are coming. Diesel robotic trucks are here now:

RollingStone

Death of the American Trucker 

Will automated trucking be Trump's greatest betrayal of his blue-collar base?

 Tim Dickinson

Electric cars can be part of the electric power grid. Electric vehicles can supplying power as needed while the vehicles are not in use and connected to the grid, a locally divided power grid soon to be entirely fueled by solar, wind, hydro and other non-fossil fuels. Entire cities in the middle of nowhere can be non-fossil fuel powered. Like say the Hawaiian islands.

Electric aircraft are here too. One flies using solar power. 

Green Car Reports

Electric Aircraft Are On The Way, Stylish E-FAN Makes First Flight 

May 9, 2014

  Antony Ingram

The US Navy is at the forefront of renewable energy.  SEE:

Amidst drop in oil prices, U.S. Navy deploys 'Great Green Fleet’

 October 1, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino

The US Marines no longer need to carry fossil fuel generators, they use silent solar & battery power.

At the dental laboratory we used a water powered torch for pinpoint soldering. It converted water to hydrogen and oxygen. It’s expensive to make hydrogen & oxygen using electricity but solar & wind can make electric power cheap, making the  hydrogen & oxygen now used as rocket fuel as power for jet aircraft.

Green Car Reports

Why liquid hydrogen may make sense for airplanes, replacing jet fuel

Feb 24, 2017

Green Car Reports

So how about all-electric supersonic aircraft, then? 

Oct 23, 2016

You’d think Wall Street would treat fossil fuel as a pariah, but Wall Street is entirely about quick, ephemeral money-making, sometimes milliseconds quick. 

"NOT STOPPABLE. IT'S UNDERWAY"-The Great Transition, Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy

“CURWOOD: So if the power just has to come from your roof to your refrigerator that's a shorter distance.

BROWN: It is, and the fascinating thing about this energy transition is the sort of geography of energy because throughout our lifetimes we've been getting much more energy from halfway around the world, and now suddenly as we're getting our electricity from solar panels, it will be 10 feet above our head. It's a big change.

CURWOOD: Well, plus 93 million miles from the sun.

BROWN: The sun is one of the most reliable sources of energy that one could hope for. It’s the geography to me that is so fascinating because our energy economy is now becoming localized which means there's no one between us and the source of our energy. When you have rooftop solar panels, you control your energy source, and no one else can really interfere with it. No one can cut off the supply. So, it's a new ballgame in a sense and a very exciting one.

CURWOOD: What does this mean politically and socially as well as economically that people will be able to get their energy directly in this distributed form? They don't have to write a big check to a big company. How does this change things in society?

BROWN: Well, it dramatically reduces the role of corporations because we won't need corporations in the oil industry and the coal industry in the way that we have in the past, and they know that. But it's really not stoppable. It's underway and it's going to continue because it's market-driven and it's driven by strong popular support. I mean, if you look at the polls of people who want to develop our solar and wind resources, I mean, they're 70 80, 90 percent. This is the way the country wants to go and people take great satisfaction out of being able to control their own energy supply with some panels on their roof.”

MORE AT:

Living on Earth

Air Date: Week of May 22, 2015  

The Great Transition to Renewables

Lester Brown speaks with host, Steve Curwood

Amazon

The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy 

Paperback – April 20, 2015

by Lester R. Brown

Coatesville Solar Initiative to integrate batteries into 9.1 Megawatt solar power plant planned for forty-eight acres in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

Coatesville Solar Initiative to Designate Pennsylvania-based Axion Power International for Solar Farm in Coatesville

Coatesville DOES | 10/23/2014

“Axion’s technology, industry contacts, and knowledge would contribute significantly to the Coatesville farm coming to fruition.” 

"Coatesville Solar Initiative (CSI) announced today it has been in discussions with Axion Power International (New Castle, PA) to incorporate Axion’s Lead Carbon (PbC®) Batteries with CSI’s 9.1 megawatt solar farm project planned for forty-eight acres in Coatesville, Pennsylvania."

MORE AT: 

Coatesville DOES

Coatesville Solar Initiative to Designate Pennsylvania-based Axion Power International for Solar Farm in Coatesville

Coatesville Solar Initiative 

Add battery storage to the Coatesville SOLAR Initiative and you have a microgrid- About Microgrid Economics

Reliable macro grids? This guy is obviously not from Chester County. He states that:

Today, we have working, historically reliable macrogrids in most parts of the world. The system isn’t broken. Does it need to be “fixed” using microgrids?

This article concerns microgrids. The largest solar facility in Pennsylvania will soon be up and running in Caln Township just outside of Coatesville, PA.

I have not heard of any plans to add battery storage or wind to the Coatesville SOLAR Initiative but if that was added to the system it would become a microgrid. 

This article concerns microgrids:

“A microgrid typically has multiple generation sources and a battery. Some people call such systems “hybrid,” but that states the obvious, physical truth. They ought instead be described as integratedsystems, since their working combination should be more than additive, and follow a well-articulated logic toward solving an objective function, for instance, production at the lowest cost; with the lowest emissions; continuous operation with quality electricity; or predictable demand with low peaks.”

FROM:

Microgrid Economics: It Takes a Village, a University, and a Ship

Exxploring the business case that microgrids offer.

Mahesh P. Bhave
September 30, 2014  

Will abandoned power transmission lines be re-used as really super zip lines?

Utility Death Spiral - There are many reasons to abandon the burning of fossil fuel for energy for renewable energy.  One of them is purely economic and driven on economic reality.

"We are witnessing the beginning of a massive shift to a new energy-distribution model – from the 'central station' utility-grid model that goes back to the 1880s to a "widely distributed" model with rooftop solar cells, on-site and grid battery storage, and microgrids… 

Last May, Barclays downgraded the entirety of the U.S. electric sector, warning that "a confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar photovoltaic-power generation and residential scale power storage is likely to disrupt the status quo" and make utility investments less attractive.

Electric utility companies may become “stranded assets”.

"A "stranded asset" is one whose price is vulnerable to a sudden decline when markets belatedly recognize the truth about their underlying value – just as the infamous "subprime mortgages" suddenly lost their value in 2007 to 2008 once investors came to grips with the fact that the borrowers had absolutely no ability to pay off their mortgages,"

FROM:

The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate

It's time to accelerate the shift toward a low-carbon future 

by AL GORE

JUNE 18, 2014

ALSO SEE:

This Is What the Utility Death Spiral Looks Like

Solar military/civilian power- Veterans coming to the Coatesville VA will see Caln’s solar installation. They might be working in the solar industry.

 “The U.S. solar industry — which has experienced a 20 percent spike in job numbers from last year — currently employs close to 143,000 individuals. Nearly 10 percent of those employed in the solar sector are military veterans. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, veterans make up only 7.6 percent of the overall U.S. workforce.”  

“While the bulk of the jobs veterans occupy in solar are comprised of installation and manufacturing positions (39 percent and 27 percent, respectively), Luecke said the overall data points to opportunities for veterans to earn a higher wage while receiving invaluable work experience. “We found that solar installers make, on average, $23 to $24 per hour,” Luecke said. “In general, these jobs are very high skilled and very well paying jobs.”

A friend retired from his DOD job a few years ago. As a new college graduate he didn't find any challenges a microwave engineer in private industry. His private industry employer didn’t care how long or how well his designs would function but only if a customer would want one. As a DOD employee he designed the satellite/ground communication system our military used in Operation Desert Storm. Years later we use some of the concepts his DOD team designed in our smart phones.

Our military is one of the largest users of solar power. The new systems the U.S. military designs may make their way into regular civilian use:

 “DOD and the Mainstreaming of Solar The fact that the DOD’s heavy investment in solar could pave the way toward such advances, and toward mainstreaming a technology that is viewed by many as too costly, is not lost on renewable energy proponents. Nor is it lost on Kidd, who emphasized the U.S. military’s historical influence on achieving technological progress that would take the private sector twice as long. “The military has long been a source of technical innovation, driving advances in technology,” Kidd said, “but only when it’s contributed to our mission. The DOD’s mission is not the same as the DOE’s, even though there is an overlap of interest in many cases.”  

Kidd added that the Army is presently working toward improvements that will set new standards for reductions in balance of system costs. “These are all very good and positive things that will result from our efforts,” he said.  

Meanwhile, the Department of Defense continues to pursue innovations in solar energy production. “The DOD’s Installation Energy Test Bed is funding demonstrations of innovative solar energy technologies from the private sector,” Wright said. “Further testing and analysis will establish their technical and economic performance, and in turn help the industry expand the role of successful technologies in mainstream renewable energy markets.”  

A recent announcement by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. unveiled plans to create a space-based solar array that would orbit the Earth, capturing solar rays and transmitting them to land-based receivers — offering evidence, even to those in doubt, that the DOD’s combined renewable energy efforts could well be the catalyst that ushers in a new and vastly improved age in solar technology."

FROM

The Solar Battlefield: How the US DOD Will Bring SolarTechnology Mainstream

Vince Font, Contributing Editor

April 23, 2014

 Caln Township PA has it’s own private-public solar generation station coming:

Coatesville Solar Initiative - Economic Impact 

COATESVILLE AND CHESTER COUNTY, PA 

"The Coatesville Solar Initiative (CSI) is a 9.1 Megawatt (MW) homegrown project! CSI managing partner, Bob Keares of Keares Electrical Contracting is based in Exton and employs over 100 people.
  

Our investors and potential workforce are local. Goods and services will be sourced locally to the greatest extent possible. Two members of the CSI development team are graduates of Coatesville High School.  

Capital expenditure of around $35 million, of which $12 million is expected to be spent locally over the two year construction phase.  

Coatesville Area School District will purchase 6 MW of clean renewable energy through a long term power purchase agreement (PPA). Millions saved over the term of the PPA will go back into education programs and help already strained budgets. The Chester County Intermediate Unit has expressed interest in purchasing the remaining 1.2 MW.  

Taxpayers in the school district will benefit from stable electricity prices over the 25 year PPA.  

Solar farms require no public infrastructure. Unlike residential and commercial developments, CSI will not burden taxpayers with the need for more classrooms, roads, trash pickup and police."

MORE AT:

http://www.gogreencsi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17

Solar Tracking-DEGERenergie

I would be interested to know if this technology can be used in a parking lot installation.

It looks like an ideal technology for a flat roof on a commercial building.

This document shows a parking lot installation on the cover.