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by Joe Martino
Spain's government has put their money where their mouth is, spending over $76 billion in subsidies for clean energy projects since 1998.
By 2013 they were reaping the rewards of such a move, as they now see 42% of their electricity coming from renewable sources. Compare that to 14% renewable sources in the US and 17% in Canada, and their efforts become remarkable indeed. [1]
Other leaders in renewable energy include,
While in Spain only 13% came from solar, they continue to move forward in making it a bigger part of their overall strategy.
One major step they have taken towards achieving that end is the creation of their new solar farm in Andasol, which is the world's largest! The plant is located near Granada in Spain and provides electricity to about 500,000 people.
The farm has the ability to produce 150 megawatts of electricity and uses an insane amount of mirrors to make that happen, 620,000 in total!
How Does It Work?
As sunlight beams down from the sun it bounces off the mirrors to heat a synthetic oil that is stored in a tube.
This drives a turbine which generates electricity. Some of the energy goes into a heat reservoir that contains thousands of tonnes of molten salt, which drive the turbines after sundown or when it's overcast. The salt method can turn the turbine for about 7.5 hours.
The amount of glass used at the solar farm would cover 0.6 square miles (1.5 square km), which is the size of about 210 football/soccer fields!
Credit: Reuters
You can see its uniquely designed curved mirror technique, which enables it to provide power to 500,000 people.
Credit: Reuters
As with other solar farms and wind farms, there remains the question of how it will affect the environment around it.
Given that there is little sign of life at the semi-desert site of Andasol, not much is being interfered with. So far workers have only seen the odd fox sneak by or a couple pigeons fly past, but no vegetation has been destroyed nor animal habitat invaded.
Given how unobtrusive the farm is, it seems clear that its benefits far outweigh the aesthetic scar to the landscape which, incredibly, can be seen from space!
The Future Of Energy?
But is this the future of energy?
I mean, if you have had the interest in following not just energy advancements in the mainstream but also in the alternative world, you know or have heard of devices that exist which would make primitive methods like wind and solar obsolete.
While to some they may seem like empty promises and fringe ideas coming out of people's garages, leading scientists are taking note, and the incredible implications of such inventions are very real and worth considering.
"Ere many generations pass; our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point in the universe."
Over the past 2 years we have been working closely with one inventor, Paramahamsa Tewari, who has created a Reactionless AC Synchronous Generator (RLG).
Tewari is an electrical engineer and former Executive Director of Nuclear Power Corporation of India. He has a background in engineering project management for construction of nuclear power stations.
The efficiency of models he has built, which have also been independently built and tested, is as high as 250%.
Tewari's newest iteration of his RLG.
Patents have been filed and the RLG is ready to be licensed to companies that manufacture rotating electrical machinery.
In fact, discussions with companies on three continents are underway.
India Times did an article on Tewari, pointing out that his invention,
Tewari has lectured as an invited speaker at international conferences in Germany, USA, and Italy on the newly discovered phenomenon of Space Power Generation.
So why so much focus on more primitive technologies when more exciting initiatives like this one are already in motion? Good question.
And there are a number of ways to explore this topic, including recognizing the deliberate suppression of said technologies - since the world and marketplace are not ready to have such devices come forward on a mass scale - and also acknowledging the fact that humanity may still have some things to learn from its current destructive and wasteful ways.
When you take a conscious look around our world it becomes clear that people are pushing to move away from what has become an enslaving way of living.
Wake up, go to work, make money to survive, put food on your table, and repeat… generation after generation...
While we have started to become aware of this cycle and how it makes us feel, have we come to terms with our current reality enough to say goodbye to it? Some of us still hold tightly to the confines of our modern world as if it's a treasured security blanket, even though it limits our potential for what type of world we can create.
Personally, I believe many people are ready for a radical change in the way we are living, and while technology helps bring us forward in that regard, we must also work within ourselves.
Tewari is a very spiritual man who believes that our physical world is also a spiritual journey.
Accordingly, his work here is part of not only a technological evolution but a conscious one as well, because for his work to become mainstream it will inevitably have to break down paradigms.
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